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On my MacBook Pro 17" running Mountain Lion, in Finder I can go to the Pictures (and Movies) folder and, in column view, I can right click on the head of the columns and add 'Dimensions'. The problem is I'm not given the option in the other, normal folders.

Is there a terminal command or something that will enable the 'Dimensions' column for all folders?

3 Answers 3

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I'm not sure if it's possible to enable the 'Dimension' attribute (nor 'Resolution') to make it just as easy to add these columns to any folder as the "normal" ones. But if you want to add one or both to folders which don't display these attributes then:

  1. Temporarily change the name of the folder to any name that starts with the characters "Pictures" (case is important!).
  2. Add the desired column(s) you want shown as usual.
  3. Change the folder name back to what it was (or other name) and these columns should still be displayed the next time that the folder is opened.

Also, it appears these attributes will continue to show up in the list for that folder and can be hidden and displayed as wanted without having to change the file name again.

(Lack of extensive testing means it's possible that at some point or for some folders the method may fail but it seems fairly stable so far.)

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  • Thanks - that's a great tip. It seems to work on the sub folders too.
    – andygrunt
    Sep 13, 2012 at 21:24
  • Works in Yosemite too. What a weird "feature"
    – dirq
    May 7, 2015 at 13:53
  • So weird, but it works! Why can't these columns just always be available as options? Mar 9, 2016 at 1:34
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    Omg I'm here early 2017! This is BIZARRE! But thank you so much for this answer. I hope new osx is gonna have an easier way to do that. Feb 5, 2017 at 21:36
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    @Pavel Don't hold your breath; it's been like this for as long as I can remember. I think someone at Apple thought it was a feature that kept the list of column choices from being cluttered up with lots of extra (like 2! Dimensions and Resolution) unnecessary column choices since who would use them except in Pictures folders, not thinking that perhaps one might put pictures in a different location (such as on an external drive, for instance). Glad this helped you.
    – Zhora
    Feb 5, 2017 at 22:20
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I did it by hardlink(https://github.com/selkhateeb/hardlink) my folder into a tmp folder under Pictures.

sudo hardlink ~/some-images ~/Pictures/tmp-folder-for-some-images

Then the two folders will sync automatically. And you can remove the hardlink when you done your work by hardlink -u ~/Pictures/tmp-folder-for-some-images

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If you want Dimension and Resolution to show up in your photos, organize your photos (use sub directories) in your "Pictures" directory. This way OSX will help you rather than get in the way.

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