Media Files and Whether ‘Preview’ Can Handle Them (for Mac)
a semi-solid list of media files I encountered and tested, and resource links to the others I didn’t
Article Contents:
-List of 2D ‘Raster’ Graphic File Extensions
-List of Graphics Editor Extensions
-List of Vector Graphics Extensions
-List of Video Extensions
-List of Audio Extensions
Working with multimedia files lead to me testing if they can be opened with the Preview application and the built in thumbnail preview on Finder.
Here’s what I found.
List of 2D ‘Raster’ Graphic File Extensions
that I have commonly used in my Mac environments (exhaustive list linked in References).
No symbol indicates file is viewable in Mac Preview
* indicates not viewable in Mac Preview
— indicates not personally tested in Mac Preview
- jpg
- jpeg
- png
- tiff
- tif
- heif
- heic
- gif
- bmp
- webp *
- raw —
- eps —
List of Graphics Editor Extensions
Some graphic editors allow Mac Finder to ‘preview’ the workspace
No symbol indicates file is viewable in Mac Preview
* indicates not viewable in Mac Preview
— indicates not personally tested in Mac Preview
- KRA (Krita)
- PSD (Adobe PhotoShop Document)
- AFPhoto (Affinity Photo Document) —
- AI (Abobe) —
- XCF (eXperimental Computing Facility format, for GIMP ) *
- SAI (Paint Tool SAI) —
- CPT (Corel Photo Paint) —
- CDR (Corel Draw) —
- PSP (Corel Paint Shop Pro) —
- MDP (Medibang and FireAlpaca) —
- PDN (Paint Dot Net) —
List of Vector Graphics Extensions
not too many formats that I am familiar with (exhaustive list linked in References)
No symbol indicates file is viewable in Mac Preview
* indicates not viewable in Mac Preview
— indicates not personally tested in Mac Preview
- ico
- svg —
List of Video Extensions
Video formats are often only viewable using QuickTime Player after being converted. In these cases, Preview is not the default application. However, the files can sometimes still be previewed in Finder Preview (to enable this, select “Show items in columns” from Finder).
(exhaustive list linked in References)
No symbol indicates file is viewable in Finder Preview
* indicates not viewable in Finder Preview
— indicates not personally tested in Finder Preview
- avi *
- mp4
- mov
- hvec —
List of Audio Extensions
Audio formats are often only openable using QuickTime Player/iTunes. In these cases, Preview is not the default application. However, the files can sometimes still be previewed in Finder Preview (to enable this, select “Show items in columns” from Finder).
No symbol indicates file is viewable in Finder Preview
* indicates not viewable in Finder Preview
— indicates not personally tested in Finder Preview
- wav
- m4a
- mp3 —
— These lists will be updated as I continue using more media files —
References
Windows media files I may not have mentioned:
