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About Thumbnail Cache
| A thumbnail is a small version of the full-sized image. Since PPP works with high resolution images, a full-sized image is usually huge, sometimes larger than 4000 x 6500 pixels. The thumbnail viewer has to load all the images and create their downscaled version. Though a single image is created within half a second, it takes a lot of time to create and view the thumbnails of hundreds of images.
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| The thumbnail cache solves this problem. It works as a huge temporary storage, where the lately used thumbnails are stored. Whenever PPP needs to display a thumbnail, it first checks if the thumbnail is in the cache. If the thumbnail can't be found, it must be generated. The generation is a relatively slow process, but once the thumbnail is generated, it will be stored in the cache. Now, anytime the thumbnail must be displayed, it does not need to be generated again, but can be loaded from the cache. This is much faster than the initial generation.
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| The first time you open the Thumbnail View, it will take some time for PPP to show all the thumbnails. Though you can see a thumbnail immediately once it is ready, it might take as much as two minutes to initially display all the thumbnails in the Thumbnail View. But the next time you want to see the thumbnails, the Thumbnail View will display all the thumbnails at a glance, or in worst case, within seconds.
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| If you carefully set up the thumbnail cache, you do not even need to wait the first time. PPP is able to generate the thumbnails in the background, while you can work with your computer. For example, you can set up the processing options while PPP is generating your thumbnail images. In the following section, we will discuss the customization of the thumbnail cache.
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| Though a thumbnail image displays immediately from the thumbnail cache, if the original image changes, the thumbnail image has to be regenerated. So if an image is in the thumbnail cache, it does not mean that it will never have to be regenerated. If you edit the original image with PixEdit or reprocess the image with PPP, then the thumbnail in the cache will expire and cannot be used the next time. You don't have to worry about it, the thumbnail for the modified images will be regenerated automatically, but you must know that it takes some time, so in this case the cache does not boost up the Thumbnail View.
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