emacs image-dired mode fixing "Thumb could not be created" thing

Ah, emacs's dired-mode... if you don't know it, do "C-h r m Dired" on your emacs right now (do Image-Dired instead for image dired mode too).

You need to have a few extra packages for image manipulation installed, but it's like the only descent/realistic way to manage (a large number of) image files I know...

"Thumb could not be created  for file ..."

This error can be annoying. In my system with:
GraphicsMagick 1.3.12 
emacs-24.3

If you have all the necessary packages and all, then probably it's because of the "strip" option used by default by image-dired-mode to make thumbnails/resize original files.


Adding this to your .emacs file should fix it.
(setq image-dired-cmd-create-thumbnail-options "%p -size %wx%h \"%f\" -resize \"%wx%h>\" jpeg:\"%t\"") ;; remove -strip option
(setq image-dired-cmd-create-temp-image-options "%p -size %wx%h \"%f\" -resize \"%wx%h>\" jpeg:\"%t\"");; remove -strip option

;;(setq image-dired-external-viewer "/usr/bin/xzgv");; a viewer I like, just in case you're interested

As an extra advice for image-dired noobs, having a 3 window emacs frame is probably the expected thing for having it working. One for dired-mode, the other for the thumbnails of image-dired, and the other for the larger preview/original size pic.

It let's you add comments/tags in an emacs exclusive "database" file, so you can manage/search for images pretty easily and fast.