Thumbnail
Encyclopedia
Index (publishing)
An index is a list of words or phrases and associated pointers to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document...
does for words. In the age of digital image
Digital image
A digital image is a numeric representation of a two-dimensional image. Depending on whether or not the image resolution is fixed, it may be of vector or raster type...
s, visual search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
s and image-organizing programs normally use thumbnails, as do most modern operating systems or desktop environments, such as Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, and GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
.
Overview
Some web designers produce thumbnails with HTMLHTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
coding that makes the user's browser shrink the picture, rather than use a smaller copy of the image. In principle the display size of an image in pixels should always correspond to its actual size, in part because one purpose of a thumbnail image on a web page is to reduce download time. The visual quality of browser resizing is also usually less than ideal.
Displaying a significant part of the picture instead of the full frame can allow using a smaller thumbnail while maintaining recognizability. For example, when thumbnailing a full-body portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
of a person, it may be better to show the face slightly reduced than an indistinct figure. This has the disadvantage that it misleads viewers about what the image contains, so it is less well suited for searching or a catalogue than for artistic presentations.
In 2002, the court in the US case Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation
Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation
Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation is a U.S. court case between a commercial photographer and a search engine company. During the case ownership of Arriba Soft changed to Sorceron, the operator of the Internet search engine Ditto.com...
ruled that it was fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
for Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
s to use thumbnail images to help web users find what they seek.
Etymology
The word "thumbnail" is a reference to the human thumbnailNail (anatomy)
A nail is a horn-like envelope covering the dorsal aspect of the terminal phalanges of fingers and toes in humans, most non-human primates, and a few other mammals. Nails are similar to claws, which are found on numerous other animals....
and alludes towards the small size of the image or picture, comparable to the size of the human thumbnail. While the earliest use of the word in this sense dates back to the 17th century, the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms is reported to have documented that the expression first appears in the mid-19th century to refer to 'a drawing the size of the thumbnail'. The word was then used figuratively, in both noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
and adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
form, to refer to anything small or concise, such as a biographical essay. The use of the word "thumbnail" in the specific context of computer images as 'a small graphical representation, as of a larger graphic, a page layout, etc.' appears to have been first used in the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
.
Dimensions
- The Denver Public LibraryDenver Public LibraryThe Denver Public Library is the public library of the city of Denver, Colorado in the United States. Its administrative headquarters is on the 7th floor of the Central Library in Downtown Denver. , the library system had 2,519,977 items in its collection, and a library card base of 417,616 local...
Digitization and Cataloguing Program produces thumbnails that are 160 pixels in the long dimension. - The California Digital LibraryCalifornia Digital LibraryThe California Digital Library is the University of California's 11th University Library. The CDL was founded to assist the ten University of California libraries in sharing their resources and holdings more effectively, in part through negotiating and acquiring consortial licenses on behalf of...
Guidelines for Digital Images recommend 150-200 pixels for each dimension. - Picture Australia requires thumbnails to be 150 pixels in the long dimension.
- The International Dunhuang ProjectInternational Dunhuang ProjectThe International Dunhuang Project is an international collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitise manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and various other archaeological sites at the eastern end of the Silk Road...
Standards for Digitization and Image Management specifies a height of 96 pixels at 72 ppiPixels per inchPixels per inch or pixel density is a measurement of the resolution of devices in various contexts; typically computer displays, image scanners, and digital camera image sensors....
. - DeviantArtDeviantArtdeviantART is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others. deviantArt, Inc...
automatically produces thumbnails that are maximum 150 pixels in the long dimension. - FlickrFlickrFlickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
automatically produces thumbnails that are a maximum 240 pixels in the long dimension, or smaller 75×75 pixels. It also applies unsharp mask to them. - PicasaPicasaPicasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website, originally created by Idealab in 2002 and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my...
automatically produces thumbnails that are a maximum 144 pixels in the long dimension, or 160×160 pixels album thumbnails.
The term vignette is sometimes used to describe an image that is smaller than the original, larger than a thumbnail, but no more than 250 pixels in the long dimension.
Thumbnail sketches
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
s and graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
ers use the term "thumbnail sketch" to describe a small drawing on paper (usually part of a group) used to explore multiple ideas quickly. Thumbnail sketches are similar to doodle
Doodle
A doodle is an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be abstract shapes....
s, but may include as much detail as a small sketch.
See also
- Digital asset managementDigital asset managementDigital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...
- Geograph Britain and Ireland
- ImageImageAn image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
- Image organizerImage organizerAn image organizer or image management application is application software focused on organizing digital images. Image organizers represent one kind of desktop organizer software applications.- Common image organizers features :...
- Contact printContact printA contact print is a photographic image produced from film; sometimes from a film negative, and sometimes from a film positive. The defining characteristic of a contact print is that the photographic result is made by exposing through the film negative or positive, onto a light sensitive material...
, a filmPhotographic filmPhotographic film is a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film...
cognate of the thumbnail - Thumbshots
- Thumbnail gallery postThumbnail gallery postA thumbnail gallery post is a common type of ad-driven website that provides links to free Internet pornography. In affiliate marketing terms, TGPs are the affiliates that drive new traffic to the product producers, paysites...
, a type of website that links to galleries of thumbnails (usually pornographic or image search results)