Getting Thumbnails / Previews of your RAW files in Ubuntu

howto.md

Howto

Install these programms

sudo apt-get install gnome-raw-thumbnailer ufraw-batch

Try now if everything works, and your thumbnails show up. If not, try the following part.

Fixing missing mime types

In case the default config does not work for you, try this:

Edit the file /usr/share/thumbnailers/raw.thumbnailer as root and insert the following content:

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=ufraw-batch
Exec=ufraw-batch --silent --size %s --out-type=png --noexif --output=%o --overwrite --embedded-image %i
MimeType=image/x-canon-cr2;image/x-canon-crw;image/x-minolta-mrw;image/x-nikon-nef;image/x-pentax-pef;image/x-panasonic-raw2;image/x-samsung-srw;image/x-olympus-orf;

Check if the mime type of your RAW images in in the MimeType list.

After that, stop nautlius and clear the thumbnail caches:

nautilus -q
rm -rf .cache/thumbnails/* .thumbnails/*

@rebernet I also don't get it to work with Sony ARW files on Ubuntu 21.10. Would be nice to see thumbnails of my photos in the file manager.

Ubuntu 24 has the same issue. I wrote a thumbnail focused on a fast RAW display:

https://github.com/emuskardin/nautilus-raw-thumbnails

Tested on Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji, Canon, and DNG RAW files

This is outdated. You don't need any extra software. Here's a bash script that turns it on simply by altering /usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer: https://gist.github.com/Fmstrat/ea91d9891dfceb1a0de762e7a4114a85