Next: Misc Dired Features, Previous: Wdired, Up: Dired [Contents][Index]

### 30.18 Viewing Image Thumbnails in Dired

Image-Dired is a facility for browsing image files. It provides viewing the images either as thumbnails or in full size, either inside Emacs or through an external viewer.

To enter Image-Dired, mark the image files you want to look at in the Dired buffer, using `m` as usual. Then type `C-t d` (`image-dired-display-thumbs`). This creates and switches to a buffer containing image-dired, corresponding to the marked files.

You can also enter Image-Dired directly by typing `M-x image-dired`. This prompts for a directory; specify one that has image files. This creates thumbnails for all the images in that directory, and displays them all in the thumbnail buffer. This takes a long time if the directory contains many image files, and it asks for confirmation if the number of image files exceeds `image-dired-show-all-from-dir-max-files`.

With point in the thumbnail buffer, you can type `RET` (`image-dired-display-thumbnail-original-image`) to display a sized version of it in another window. This sizes the image to fit the window. Use the arrow keys to move around in the buffer. For easy browsing, use `SPC` (`image-dired-display-next-thumbnail-original`) to advance and display the next image. Typing `DEL` (`image-dired-display-previous-thumbnail-original`) backs up to the previous thumbnail and displays that instead.

To view and the image in its original size, either provide a prefix argument (`C-u`) before pressing `RET`, or type `C-RET` (`image-dired-thumbnail-display-external`) to display the image in an external viewer. You must first configure `image-dired-external-viewer`.

You can delete images through Image-Dired also. Type `d` (`image-dired-flag-thumb-original-file`) to flag the image file for deletion in the Dired buffer. You can also delete the thumbnail image from the thumbnail buffer with `C-d` (`image-dired-delete-char`).

More advanced features include image tags, which are metadata used to categorize image files. The tags are stored in a plain text file configured by `image-dired-db-file`.

To tag image files, mark them in the dired buffer (you can also mark files in Dired from the thumbnail buffer by typing `m`) and type `C-t t` (`image-dired-tag-files`). This reads the tag name in the minibuffer. To mark files having a certain tag, type `C-t f` (`image-dired-mark-tagged-files`). After marking image files with a certain tag, you can use `C-t d` to view them.

You can also tag a file directly from the thumbnail buffer by typing `t t` and you can remove a tag by typing `t r`. There is also a special tag called “comment” for each file (it is not a tag in the exact same sense as the other tags, it is handled slightly differently). That is used to enter a comment or description about the image. You comment a file from the thumbnail buffer by typing `c`. You will be prompted for a comment. Type `C-t c` to add a comment from Dired (`image-dired-dired-comment-files`).

Image-Dired also provides simple image manipulation. In the thumbnail buffer, type `L` to rotate the original image 90 degrees anti clockwise, and `R` to rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. This rotation is lossless, and uses an external utility called JpegTRAN.

Next: Misc Dired Features, Previous: Wdired, Up: Dired [Contents][Index]