← Notes from the workshop · 2026-07-22 · Bytera team

Larger image previews

Browse RAW files and scanned maps without downloading the whole archive.

Photographers and anyone who files drawings have the same complaint. To see whether a picture is the right picture, they have had to download it. A folder of a few hundred camera originals then becomes an afternoon of waiting, and the archive stops being a place you browse.

A preview that is large enough to decide

Previews are now generated at a size you can actually judge: enough to read a street name on a scanned map, enough to see whether a portrait is the selected frame, not so large that opening a folder pulls the originals across the desk. The preview is stored beside the file record. Opening it does not mark the original as downloaded, and it does not change the file's date.

RAW originals, large TIFFs and the long scans that come off a wide-format scanner all use the same path. If a format has no preview yet, the file is listed with its name, size and date, and a preview is queued rather than blocking the folder. You can keep scrolling.

What you are looking at

The preview is a view, not a second original. Colour is close to the embedded profile where the file has one, and we say so on the frame when it does not. Cropping, rating and the filename you assigned stay with the original. Deleting the preview, which you can do per folder if storage is the thing you are watching, does not delete the file.

Maps and drawings are the case we tested most carefully. A preview that is sharp in the middle and mush at the title block is useless, because the title block is how a set of drawings is identified. The new size keeps that corner readable at the width of the folder window on a normal laptop.

Folders people share

A shared folder shows the same previews to everyone who can already see the files. It does not grant a new permission. Someone with view access can browse. Someone without access sees neither the preview nor the name. Previews are built from the copy in the archive, so a guest does not cause the original to be fetched onto their machine.

If a folder should keep an access log of who opened it, that switch is described in Enable the access log.

Limits we are willing to state

Very large originals still take a moment the first time a preview is made. After that, browsing is local to the desk. We do not promise a preview of every obscure camera format on the day it is released. When we add one, the folder picks it up on the next pass and this page gets a dated note.

The change is included on the current plans. It does not increase the price of storage, because a preview is not billed as a second copy of the archive. If a particular scanner or camera is producing files that stay as names only, tell the help centre which model it is. Those reports are how the last gap in the wide-format scans was closed.