View and export
PSD documents on Windows
PSD Explorer adds real PSD and PSB support to Windows Explorer — thumbnails, previews, and file properties — plus a dedicated app for viewing, zooming, turning, showing or hiding layers, and exporting your documents to PNG, JPEG, PDF, and more. It composites the layers itself, so documents saved without a composite image, or in 16 bits, show up too. Clip Studio Paint, Affinity, Krita and OpenRaster documents ride along, shown through the image they embed.
Installation
PSD Explorer is distributed through the Microsoft Store as a single package that installs both the desktop app and the Windows Explorer shell extensions.
No configuration needed. After installation, PSD thumbnails, the preview pane, and file properties work automatically in Windows Explorer. Just navigate to a folder containing PSD files.
What gets installed
PSD Explorer App
A desktop app for opening, viewing, and exporting PSD, PSB, and the other painting formats. Accessible from the Start menu.
Shell Extensions
Background components that power thumbnails, the preview pane, and file properties in Windows Explorer. These run automatically — no action needed.
An optional Better Shell Integration (administrator required) registers thumbnails, previews, file properties, the Details columns, and a PSD decoder, and makes them appear even when another app is your default for .psd. Turn it on from Settings → Windows Explorer — see Better Shell Integration.
The Interface
PSD Explorer has a simple left-hand navigation. You can open a document by clicking Open a document..., dragging a file onto the window, or launching it from Windows Explorer.
Opening a file is required before the Document and Export pages show anything. The Home page and the export pages offer an Open a document... button to get started.
Opening a file
There are several ways to open a document in the app:
- Click Open a document... on the Home page, or press Ctrl+O, and pick a file. The dialog lists every supported format together, and each one on its own.
- Drag and drop a file from Windows Explorer directly onto the PSD Explorer window.
- In Windows Explorer, right-click a file and choose Open with → PSD Explorer. The app opens and goes straight to the Document page.
- From the Explorer preview pane, right-click and choose the Open entry for PSD Explorer.
Single instance: the app runs as a single window. If you open a file from Explorer while it's already open, the existing window is brought to the front and the new document is loaded — you won't get a second window.
Windows Explorer Integration
Once PSD Explorer is installed, Windows Explorer gains three new capabilities for PSD and PSB files, and for the other painting formats — no extra steps required.
Thumbnails
Documents display their actual content as a thumbnail in Explorer's icon views. When a PSD carries no usable composite image, the layers are composited to draw it, which Windows cannot do on its own.
Preview Pane
Select a document and press Alt+P (or use View → Preview Pane) to see a live, zoomable preview inside Explorer. Its right-click menu turns the document, toggles the color profile, and shows or hides layers.
File Properties
Dimensions, bit depth, resolution, color mode, color profile, layer counts, and the embedded Exif and XMP metadata appear in Explorer's Details pane, tooltips, and the file's Properties → Details tab.
Using the Preview Pane
The preview pane renders only the part of the document that is visible, at the pane's resolution, so even a very large document previews quickly. Here's what you can do inside it:
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Zoom in / out | Hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel |
| Scroll the document | Scroll the mouse wheel, or use the scroll bars |
| Pan | When zoomed in, drag the document with the mouse |
| Zoom presets | Right-click → Zoom |
| Turn the document | Right-click → Rotate left or Rotate right |
| Color profile | Right-click → Color profile. On for every file, the menu turns it off for the file shown. Greyed out when the document has no profile Windows can use |
| Layers | Right-click → Layers: Show all, Hide all, As saved, or tick each layer on its own. PSD and PSB only |
| Open in the app | Right-click → the Open entry for PSD Explorer |
The choices you make in the pane last as long as it shows that document. The preview is rendered in the background, so File Explorer never freezes, even on a large document.
Thumbnails look out of date? Windows caches thumbnails. After changing related settings, use Settings → Reset Explorer thumbnails to make Windows Explorer rebuild its thumbnail cache. You can also clear it with Windows' built-in Disk Cleanup tool: press Win+R, run cleanmgr, tick Thumbnails, and click OK.
When the trial has ended. Once the free trial is over and the app is not licensed, Windows no longer starts PSD Explorer at all. File Explorer then shows the file type's plain icon instead of a thumbnail, the preview pane stays empty, and the file properties PSD Explorer adds are not shown. With Better Shell Integration installed you see a small Trial expired placeholder and a trial notice in the preview pane instead. Opening a file with the app shows an error, see File system error (-2143322102). Get the app from the Microsoft Store to restore everything. Your files are never changed.
Why a few thumbnails still show. Windows keeps a thumbnail cache of its own, so pictures made while PSD Explorer was licensed stay in the folders you have already visited, until that cache is rebuilt. With Better Shell Integration installed, the first files a fresh Explorer session asks about can still be drawn, because PSD Explorer answers Explorer straight away rather than hold it up while the Store confirms the licence. A mix of icons and thumbnails is expected, it does not mean the trial is still running.
Viewing Documents
The Document page is the app's main viewer. It shows the document the way it was saved — the composite image when the file has a real one, the layers composited otherwise — and lets you zoom, turn, and inspect it. The document opens fitted to the window.
Zoom & fit
Use the Zoom box at the top of the page to jump to a preset, or type a percentage. Hold Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel to zoom smoothly, centered on the mouse pointer, or press Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-. Zoom percentages are relative to the fitted view, so 100% shows the whole document. Press Ctrl+1 to show the document's actual pixels, one document pixel per screen pixel. Past the document's own resolution, each pixel is drawn as a sharp square, never smoothed, so you can inspect it.
Three fit buttons frame the document instantly:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fit | Scales the whole document to fit inside the window (Ctrl+0) |
| Fit width | Scales so the document's width fills the window, starting at the top |
| Fit height | Scales so the document's height fills the window, starting at the left |
The fit you pick is remembered and applied to every document you open, even after the app restarts. It also follows the window when you resize it. As soon as you zoom by hand, the fit is released for the current document, click a fit button again to get it back.
Pan
Turning the document
The Rotate left and Rotate right buttons turn the document a quarter turn at a time (Ctrl+Shift+R and Ctrl+R). The turn applies to the view and to the exports, it never changes the file. A newly opened document starts upright, or the way its own metadata says, see Orientation.
Large documents
Only the part of the document that is on screen is rendered, at the screen's resolution, so opening, zooming and panning stay responsive on large documents. Compositing many layers of a very large document can still take a moment, and a small progress ring appears in the corner of the view when it takes longer than a third of a second. The Keep render memory setting can make big documents redraw faster.
When something is drawn approximately
A few Photoshop features are not drawn exactly, see Limitations. When the document uses one, a bar at the top of the view says Drawn approximately, not fully applied: and lists them, for instance layer effects or pattern fills, so you know the picture may differ slightly from Photoshop's.
Layers
Click the Layers button on the Document page to open the layers pane. It lists every layer and group of a PSD or PSB document, top first, indented under the groups they belong to, each with a check box.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tick or untick a layer | Shows or hides that layer. Unticking a group hides everything inside it. |
| As saved | Returns every layer to the visibility the file records. |
| Select all | Shows every layer and group. |
| Select none | Hides every layer and group. |
As soon as you change a layer, the view composites the layers itself instead of using the document's saved composite image. The choice applies to the view and to exports of the document as shown. The layers pane remembers whether it was open.
Mockups and templates. Many templates hide the real picture under a top layer that says something like "remove this layer", and their saved composite image only shows that cover. Untick it to see the mockup, which PSD Explorer composites from the layers.
The layers pane is not available for the other painting formats, which are shown from the flattened image they embed.
Color & Orientation
Color profile
When a document carries an ICC color profile — embedded, or only named in its metadata and installed on your PC — PSD Explorer converts its colors through it with Windows' color management, so CMYK, grayscale, and wide-gamut RGB documents look as intended. The Color profile button on the Document page turns this on and off, and is greyed out when the document has no profile Windows can use. Its tooltip names the profile.
The same choice applies to exports. Thumbnails have their own setting, Color manage thumbnails, and the preview pane its own menu entry.
Orientation
A document can record the way it is meant to be turned, in its Exif or XMP metadata, as cameras do. When Honor the document's orientation is on, the app, its exports, the thumbnails and the preview pane all show the document turned that way. Your own quarter turns come on top of it.
Document Information & Metadata
PSD Explorer reads the technical facts and the embedded metadata of a document, and shows them both inside the app and in Windows Explorer.
In the app
On the Document page, click the information (ⓘ) button, or press Alt+Enter, to open the document's properties. Depending on what the file contains, they include:
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Format | PSD or PSB, or the other format the document is in |
| Dimensions, color mode, depth | Width and height in pixels, RGB, CMYK, grayscale, Lab, indexed, duotone, bitmap or multichannel, and the bits per channel |
| Resolution, compression | The document's dpi, and how its composite image is compressed |
| Application | The program that saved the document |
| Layers | The numbers of layers, groups, text layers, smart objects and adjustment layers, and whether a composite image and transparency were saved |
| Color profile, orientation | The profile, embedded or only named, and the orientation the file records |
| Title, authors, subject, keywords… | The XMP and Exif fields embedded in the file, dates included |
| Camera | Camera, lens, exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length, and location, when a photo was placed in the document with its Exif |
In Windows Explorer
The same information is exposed to Windows, so documents behave like other picture types: add columns such as Dimensions, Title, or Authors in Explorer's Details view, read them in the info tooltip, and see them in the file's Properties → Details tab.
PSD Explorer also adds columns of its own: Layers, Groups, Text layers, Smart objects, Adjustment layers, Color mode, Color profile, and Composite.
PSD Explorer's own columns are registered by the Better Shell Integration. If they don't appear in Explorer's column list, make sure it's installed in Settings.
Exporting
The export pages convert your document into a widely supported format — a picture (PNG, JPEG, and more) or PDF — at several sizes in one click. Exports are drawn exactly like the view: turned the way it is turned, color managed the way the Color profile button says, with the layers it shows.
The navigation menu has two entries:
| Entry | What it does |
|---|---|
| Export as images | Exports image files, in the format chosen in the Image format list. |
| Export as PDF | Exports one PDF document per size. Its title, authors, subject and keywords come from the document's metadata when it has some, the file name and your Windows user name otherwise. |
Export settings
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Output folder | Where exported files are saved. Browse picks a folder, Open folder shows it in Explorer. |
| File name template | How exported files are named, using tokens like {name}, {size} and {layer} — see the token reference. A live sample shows the resulting name. |
| Image format | PNG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, and the others registered on your system. Hidden when exporting as PDF. |
| Overwrite | When on, existing files with the same name are replaced. When off, they are skipped with a warning. |
| Preserve transparency | When on, transparent areas stay transparent. When off, they are filled with white. Only for formats that support transparency. |
What to export
The What to export list starts with Document, as shown, the document as the view shows it, then every layer and group of the document, indented the way the layers pane shows them. Tick as many as you want, each is written to files of its own, at every size. Select all and Select none help with long lists.
A layer exported on its own is drawn with the groups it belongs to, and a group with everything inside it. When more than one entry is ticked, the file name template must contain {layer}, so every entry gets distinct file names — see {layer}.
Export sizes
Each row of the size list produces one file per entry. The number is a pixel size: the document is scaled so its longest side is that many pixels. Default sizes are 256, 512, 1024, and 2048 pixels. Add size adds the next standard size, Clear all and Remove delete sizes, and you can edit a number directly.
Color and metadata in the files
PNG, JPEG, TIFF, JPEG XR and HEIF files are tagged as sRGB, the color space they are written in. They also carry the document's metadata — title, authors, keywords, copyright, comments, dates, camera, and location — as far as each format can hold it, so other apps and Windows Explorer show it. The orientation is left out, since the pixels are already turned.
Running an export
- Open a document first.
- Choose Export as images or Export as PDF in the navigation menu.
- Set your output folder, format (images only), what to export, and the sizes.
- Click Export. A notification confirms how many files were saved.
The Export button is disabled if the output folder is invalid, the file name template is missing {size}, or {layer} when several entries are ticked, no sizes or no entries are chosen, or no format is selected. A message in red explains what needs fixing.
Other Painting Formats
PSD Explorer also shows documents of four other painting and design applications. Their files embed a flattened image of the artwork, which PSD Explorer shows everywhere a PSD is shown: thumbnails, the preview pane, file properties, the app, and exports.
| Format | Extensions | What is shown |
|---|---|---|
| Clip Studio Paint | .clip | The canvas preview the file stores, the full canvas size or a quarter of it on large canvases |
| Affinity | .afphoto .afdesign .afpub .af | The preview the file ends with, at most 512 pixels on its longest side |
| Krita | .kra | The full-size merged image, or its small preview for small thumbnails |
| OpenRaster | .ora | The merged image or the thumbnail, whichever is larger |
File properties show what the document states about itself, not the size of the image it embeds: the canvas size, resolution, bit depth, color model and profile, the numbers of layers and groups, and the application. Krita documents add their title, author, and description.
Layers are not read. These formats are shown through their flattened image, so the layers pane and the per-layer exports are not available, and the image may be smaller than the canvas — the properties (ⓘ) show both sizes. A file that only shares one of these extensions, an Oracle .ora configuration file for instance, is recognized as something else and left alone.
Better Shell Integration (administrator required)
PSD Explorer can register its file types with Windows itself. This turns on thumbnails, the preview pane, file properties and PSD Explorer's own Details columns in File Explorer, plus a system-wide PSD decoder so other Windows apps can open PSD and PSB files. Because it changes the machine, Windows asks for administrator approval when you turn it on or off.
This is optional. The app works without it. Turn it on when you want thumbnails, previews, and properties in File Explorer even when another app is the default, PSD Explorer's columns, and other apps to open PSD files.
It works even when another app is your default. If you open PSD files in your image editor and keep it as the default, PSD Explorer still supplies the thumbnails, previews, and properties, and your default app for double-click stays exactly as you set it.
For your account, not everyone on the PC. Installing it needs an administrator, but it only works for a Windows account that has PSD Explorer installed and licensed. If the app is uninstalled, the thumbnails, previews, and file properties stop working too, even while the integration is still listed.
Install, update, uninstall
Everything is done from Settings → Windows Explorer → Better shell integration. The card shows the current status and the matching buttons, and each action prompts for administrator approval.
| Status | Meaning | Button |
|---|---|---|
| Not installed | Nothing is registered with Windows on this PC. | Install |
| Installed | Registered on this PC and current. | Reinstall / Remove |
| Installed, update available | A newer build ships with this app version than the one registered. | Update / Remove |
Give it a minute. After you install it, thumbnails can take a while to appear, because Windows caches how it resolves thumbnail handlers. Wait a little, or run Reset Explorer thumbnails (see Settings) and press F5.
Not every app can use the decoder. Some Microsoft Store apps — notably Windows Photos and Paint — rely on their own built-in list of formats, so they will not pick up a third-party PSD decoder. Classic desktop apps that decode through Windows Imaging Component do benefit. The decoder reads PSD and PSB, the other painting formats are not part of it.
Recent Files
The Recent files page keeps a list of documents you've opened before, so you can jump back to them quickly.
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Click a file link | Opens that document in the viewer. |
| Clear recent files | Removes all entries from the history, after asking you to confirm. |
| Remove missing files | Removes entries for files that have been deleted or moved. |
You can turn recent-file history off in Settings.
Settings
The Settings page groups the app's options. Most viewing and export choices are made in context, on the Document and export pages.
Appearance
| Setting | Options | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Application theme | Use system setting Light Dark | Follow the system, or pick light or dark. |
| Remember recent files | On / Off | Keep a list of the documents opened recently. |
Viewing
| Setting | Options | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Honor the document's orientation | On / Off | Turn a document the way its Exif or XMP metadata says, in the app, its exports, the thumbnails and the preview pane. On by default. Reset the thumbnails for the ones already made. |
| Keep render memory | On / Off | Big documents redraw faster in the app and in the Explorer preview pane, which then hold up to 2 GB more memory while they run. Thumbnails never do. Off by default. |
Windows Explorer
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Better shell integration | Install, update, or remove the shell integration, see Better Shell Integration. Each action needs administrator approval. |
| Color manage thumbnails | Convert Explorer thumbnails through the document's color profile, embedded or named in its metadata. On by default. Reset the thumbnails for the ones already made. |
| Reset Explorer thumbnails | Asks Windows Explorer to rebuild its thumbnail cache so thumbnail changes take effect. You'll be asked to confirm. |
The About section shows the app version and a link to detailed System Information — useful when reporting an issue. Your last-used export folder, file name template, image format, sizes, transparency choice, fit mode, color profile choice, and whether the layers pane is open are remembered between sessions.
Supported Formats
Input — PSD and PSB
Every color mode — RGB, CMYK, grayscale, Lab, indexed, duotone, bitmap and multichannel — at 1, 8, 16 and 32 bits per channel, with every compression a PSD can use.
Input — other painting formats
Shown through the flattened image they embed, see Other Painting Formats.
Export
Picture exports cover the image formats registered on your Windows system, the most common are shown below. PDF wraps the picture in a document page. A green dot marks formats that keep transparency, a blue dot marks document output.
* HEIC/HEIF requires the HEIF Image Extensions package from the Microsoft Store, or another codec that registers HEIC/HEIF support. If it's not installed, the format won't appear in the list.
Read only. PSD Explorer reads documents — it does not create or re-save them. To keep a result, export it to one of the formats above.
File Name Tokens
Customize how exported files are named with these tokens in the File name template field. Tokens are case-insensitive. Write {{ if you need a literal brace.
How {layer} names a layer
{layer} is the layer's path: the names of the groups it sits in, from the outermost one, then its own, joined by _, so two layers of the same name in different groups never write the same file. Since a layer's own name may contain a _, that character is written ♦005F inside a name, and ♦ itself is written ♦2666, so every _ in the result separates two levels. Characters Windows does not allow in file names are written the same way. Two layers with the same path get (2), (3), and so on.
Example template: {name}_{layer}_{size} produces files like poster_document_512.png, poster_Background_512.png, and poster_Logo_Text_512.png for a Text layer inside a Logo group.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Quick actions in the PSD Explorer app and in the Windows Explorer preview pane.
In the PSD Explorer app
In the Windows Explorer preview pane
Limitations
PSD Explorer is a fast, faithful viewer, converter, and decoder — not an image editor. Knowing what it draws exactly helps set expectations.
View & export only
You can open, inspect, and export documents, but not edit them or save changes. Your original files are never modified.
What the compositor draws
When a document's saved composite image is used, what you see is exactly what the application saved. When the layers have to be composited — because the file has no real composite image, or because you changed the layers — PSD Explorer draws them itself, and draws most of what Photoshop does:
| Drawn | Approximated or left out |
|---|---|
| Every blend mode, opacity and fill opacity, layer and vector masks, clipping masks, pass-through groups | Blend If ranges, knockout, mask feathering, clipping masks not blended as a group |
| Adjustment layers: Invert, Posterize, Threshold, Levels, Curves, Exposure, Hue/Saturation (master and Colorize), Brightness/Contrast | Other adjustments, such as Color Balance, Black & White, Photo Filter, Channel Mixer, Gradient Map, Selective Color, and Hue/Saturation color ranges |
| Layer styles: Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Color Overlay, Gradient Overlay, Stroke | Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, Satin, Bevel & Emboss, Pattern Overlay |
| Solid color and gradient fill layers, shape layers' fills, text and smart objects as their saved pixels | Pattern fills, shape strokes of shape layers that store no pixels |
When a document uses something from the right-hand column, the view says so, see When something is drawn approximately.
Other painting formats
Clip Studio Paint, Affinity, Krita and OpenRaster documents are shown through the flattened image they embed, which may be smaller than the canvas — a quarter of it in large Clip Studio documents, and at most 512 pixels in Affinity documents. Their layers are not read. See Other Painting Formats.
Very large documents
PSB documents can be huge. The viewer and the preview pane render only what is on screen, at the screen's resolution, so they stay responsive. A full-size export of a very large document needs memory in proportion to its pixels, so export the biggest documents at the sizes you need rather than at full size.
Tips & Tricks
Every layer of a mockup in one pass
- Open the document and choose Export as images.
- In What to export, click Select all, or tick the layers and groups you want.
- Use a template such as
{name}_{layer}_{size}. - Click Export — every layer, at every size, lands in your output folder in a single run.
PSD files that show no thumbnail in Windows
Windows on its own can only show the composite image a PSD saves when Maximize Compatibility is on, and recent Photoshop versions save none for 16-bit documents. PSD Explorer composites the layers of those documents itself, so they get real thumbnails and previews too.
"File system error (-2143322102)" when opening a file
If double-clicking a file, or choosing Open with → PSD Explorer, shows a message with the file's path and File system error (-2143322102), your free trial has ended. Windows refuses to start an app whose Store licence is no longer valid, and that number is the Store's licensing error, 0x803F800A, which Windows shows without an explanation. Nothing is wrong with the file.
Get PSD Explorer from the Microsoft Store and the files open again. Until then you can open them with another app, or make another app the default for them in Windows Settings → Apps → Default apps.
Thumbnails or previews don't show (another app is the default)
Windows 10 is the strict case. On Windows 10, whichever app is the default for a type owns its thumbnails and preview outright, so those appear only once you make PSD Explorer the default for the type, or install Better Shell Integration.
When several installed apps handle the same file type, Windows lets you choose which one provides it. If another program that also reads these files is the default, Windows may use its thumbnails and preview instead.
- Open Windows Settings → Apps → Default apps.
- Find and click PSD Explorer in the list.
- For each extension you want, click the file type and choose PSD Explorer as the default.
This works in reverse too: if you prefer another app for certain formats, leave those set to it. After changing the default, run Settings → Reset Explorer thumbnails if Explorer still shows old cached thumbnails.
Preview stays blank for files downloaded from the internet
Starting with Windows 11 25H2, Microsoft blocks the File Explorer preview pane for files that carry the "Mark of the Web" — files downloaded from the internet, or coming from a location Windows considers unsecured. This affects every file type, and it is a Windows security decision: there is nothing PSD Explorer can do at its level to override it.
How to restore the preview: right-click the file → Properties, tick Unblock at the bottom of the General tab, then click OK. To clear many files at once, PowerShell's Unblock-File cmdlet does the same in bulk.
Microsoft has acknowledged this behaviour. For the full explanation and more ways to re-enable previews, see this Windows Latest article — in particular its "How to unblock previews in File Explorer" chapter.
Dark mode
PSD Explorer follows your Windows theme by default. For a fixed look, choose Light or Dark in Settings.
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