DDS Thumbnail Viewer

DDS Thumbnail Viewer is a piece of software that once installed integrates with your operating system and allows you to view .dds files in thumbnail size.

DDS, or DirectDraw Surface, is an image unit developed by Microsoft which has been used with DirectX graphics. It was first introduced with DirectX 7 in order to store both uncompressed and compressed textures. It’s designed to support cube and volume maps, as well as mipmaps.

The format can be either a rectangular collection of pixels that have a characteristic width, height and format, or it can store vertices for Microsoft Direct 3D.

With DDS Thumbnail Viewer you can explore these files just like any other images that are located in a folder on your computer and the files are in thumbnail viewing mode. It’s easy to install and immediately as the process is complete, you are able to view the files.

The application, doesn’t display any kind of interface and can not be configured, after all, it simply unlocks a portion of your operating system that allows you to view the .dds file.

Once the installation is complete you can view the thumbs but you can not open them as you can with normal image files formats such as .jpeg, .bmp or .png. They are only made available in thumbnail size but if you own a more recent version of Windows, changing the size of the thumbnail can enlarge the file considerably, making it easier to see what it contains.