If you spend hours inside Photo Supreme, you know how central the thumbnail grid is. It’s your window into your image catalog: the first place where organization, clarity, and aesthetics meet.

The good news? Photo Supreme gives you remarkable control over how those thumbnails look and what information they show. With a few tweaks, you can turn your grid from a generic wall of images into a powerful visual dashboard. Let’s explore how.

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Where to Find Thumbnail Customization

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At the bottom of the Collection Viewer, you’ll see a command bar. And right in it, a button labeled Thumbnail Style. 

Clicking this opens the Thumbnail Style Panel, your gateway to fine-tuning how thumbnails are displayed. From here, you can choose a layout style, enable square crops, decide what’s shown in the info bar, or dive deeper with full custom thumbnail lines.

 

Choose a Thumbnail Style

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Photo Supreme offers several built-in thumbnail styles, each suited for a different workflow:

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• Basic
  Minimal overlays, great for browsing.

• Clean
  Even less clutter; hides most info elements.

• Framed
  Adds a photographic border around each thumbnail for a more “print-like” feel.

• Grid
  Compact, evenly spaced thumbnails for tight overviews.

• Custom Thumbnail Info
  The powerhouse mode: lets you define exactly what information appears under each image.

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You can switch styles on the fly, and Photo Supreme remembers your last choice.

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Square Thumbnails for a Uniform Look

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In the same panel, you’ll see a Square Thumbnails checkbox. Enable this to crop all thumbnails to a 1:1 ratio.

This option is perfect if you want a tidy, gallery-like layout; especially useful for social media management or contact sheet previews.

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Just keep in mind: it crops the preview, so some edge details might be hidden.

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The Bar Style: Ratings and Color Labels

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Below every thumbnail, Photo Supreme can show a small bar for quick visual cues.

You can set it to display:

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• Nothing (for a minimalist grid)

• Ratings (star ratings only)

• Color Labels

• Ratings and Color Labels
   

If you’re tagging and sorting a lot, having this feedback visible saves clicks and keeps your workflow fluid.

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Going Deep: Custom Thumbnail Info

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The Custom Thumbnail Info mode turns your thumbnail captions into a full-fledged metadata panel.

You can define up to 10 lines of information under each thumbnail: mixing metadata, catalog data, and file system info.
For example, you could display the filename, dimensions, ISO, and label count all at once.

Each line uses "macros", which act as placeholders that pull live data from your catalog or files.

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Example: A Custom Info Line

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<span style="font-family: tahoma">
  <span style="color: #theme:HighlightFillColor">
    %FileExtension{encode=html;uppercase=y}
  </span>
  %ImageFileSizeShort
  %FileFolderName{encode=html}
</span>
 

This setup shows:

• The file extension (in uppercase and themed highlight color)

• The image’s file size

• The folder name

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All styled neatly with a custom font.

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Adding Macros

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You don’t need to memorize macro syntax. Each custom info line includes a drop-down button that lists available macros: from EXIF data like %xmp:exif:ISOSpeedRatings to catalog labels like %CatalogLabelList.

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You can mix and match freely, and even use mini-HTML or mini-CSS for fine-tuned formatting.

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Online Repository: Advanced Examples

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For inspiration, click the drop-down icon in a Custom Thumbnail Info line and select From Repository.

This connects to the Photo Supreme Online Repository, where you can import predefined custom lines created by the community: for example, lines that show existing sidecar files, combined metadata sets, or visual cues for categories of label assignments.

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This is a great resource if you want advanced setups without writing macros from scratch.

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Pro Tips for a Perfect Grid

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• Keep it readable: Limit yourself to 2–4 lines of info for clarity.

• Use consistent fonts: Small sans-serif fonts like Tahoma or Segoe UI render cleanly at small sizes.

• Color smartly: Use theme colors (#theme:HighlightFillColor) instead of hardcoded ones: they adapt to dark/light mode.

• Mix file and catalog data: Try combining macros, e.g. %FileFolderName %ImageRating used on the same line.

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Final Thoughts

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Photo Supreme’s thumbnail customization tools are a quiet superpower. They let you transform your image browser into a workspace that reflects how you think about your photos; whether that means showing only visual cues, or layering rich metadata for deep analysis.

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Once you start tailoring your grid, you’ll wonder how you ever managed with the defaults.

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