Increase thumbnail size in SharePoint 2010 Picture Libraries

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This week I created a huge image library for a customer in the fashion industry. One of the functional requirements was to quickly check and locate images. The end users are used to the Extra large icons view in Windows Explorer. A SharePoint picture library, by default, shows much smaller icons when navigating through the library. I found out how to change the default thumbnail size for a SharePoint picture library.

The default thumbnail size in a SharePoint picture library is 160px (width). For a better user experience you can increase the thumbnail size, let's say to 240px width. To do this follow the steps below.

1. Go to the FEATURES folder, and then to PictureLibrary --> PicLib

On the SharePoint WFE, go to \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\PictureLibrary\PicLib.

2. Open the schema file

3. Set the ThumbnailSize to 240. (it’s in one of the first lines).

4. Reset IIS


The new thumbnail size will now be applied to every new picture library!