Easy/quick way to make a backdrop/fanart the "thumb" image

[heciruam 31]

Hi,

 

I find myself constantly using a fanart/backdrop as the thumbnail because there is no Thumb image from the metadata providers yet. There is often a fanart/background that works as thumb.

 

When I'm in the Edit Images mode of an Item, I would like to have a button that makes a backdrop the thumbnail image is then removed from backdrops. Since drag and drop was intruduced recently that could also be a way to handle it.

I just want a quick way to handle this without having to manualy rename files.

 

Cheers.

Edited August 10, 2021 by heciruam

[GrimReaper 4966]

"+" on Thumb (or three-dot menu, Insert image from file), browse to fanart.jpg, afterwards Delete icon on Backdrop? 5 seconds? 

[heciruam 31]

The browsing part takes me a quite a bit of time. I'm probably faster if I do this outside of the Emby UI. Since I do this so often that a button would save me a lot time.

[ebr 16411]

FYI in pretty much all instances, if an item doesn't have a thumb, we already show the backdrop in its place instead.

[heciruam 31]

I know I just don't want text on the backdrop.

[ebr 16411]

39 minutes ago, heciruam said:

I know I just don't want text on the backdrop.

Sorry, I don't understand how what you requested would address that...

[crusher11 1184]

3 hours ago, ebr said:

Sorry, I don't understand how what you requested would address that...

They would then be able to use a different backdrop, without text, as the backdrop while having the backdrop with text as the thumb. 

[heciruam 31]

This movie is "old" enough that the metadata prividers return a Thumb. I will just use this as a fake example:

 

I just want a quick way to get "fanart1.jpg"  to be used as "Thumb". I want "fanart.jpg" to be the Backdrop.

The moving/renaming from "Backdrops" to "Thumb" is just a tedious task. I have to go back out of the "Edit Image" page, scroll down to figure out where the movie is located, scroll up, go back into the "Edit Image" page, click on "select image file", click on "browse", locate the movie folder, remember and select right one, click upload. (Delete it from Backdrops)

A button next to the delete button that renames that offers to rename that file to Thumb.jpg (or asking what to rename it to), would save me a minute of my life everytime I do this. When I'm remote not connected to a VPN I also can't locate the file from backdrops.

 

If I could access the Backdrop images as well through the "Thumb" search button (returning both declared Thumbs and Backdrops by the provider), that would help me as well. That might confuse other Users though.

 

Don't get me wrong. This is not the #1 feature priority for me. I also don't know how hard this would be to implement. You recently added the Drag-n-Drop feature for backdrops, so I thought whoever worked on it, might still be familiar with the code in that section.

 

I hope this makes it more clear.

 

Clicking on the Plus symbol for "Thumb"

[roaku 843]

Have you tried right clicking on the image to open its Emby url in a new tab, then pasting that link into the 'from url' option for the thumb?

Might speed things up a bit from what you're currently doing.

[ebr 16411]

A drag and drop feature there is not a bad idea but simply renaming fanart1.jpg to landscape.jpg in the file system will accomplish what you want a little easier than you are doing now.

[Happy2Play 9831]

As ebr mentioned renaming the image will accomplish what you are trying to do.  I do this all the time when there is no Thumb from provider but there are ie TMDB backdrops with text (specific language backdrops).

[Mibok 158]

+1 This is specially useful if CoverArt is enabled, since CoverArt can process thumbs displayed on the home screen but not backdrops displayed as thumbs.

[evil_crab 25]

+1 to this feature request. Since very few providers post thumbs as a separate category (to my knowledge, only Fanart does it), it would be nice to be able to include backdrops in the Thumb search. Something like this, maybe:

Edited April 8 by evil_crab

[Luke 42414]

On 4/8/2026 at 6:59 AM, evil_crab said:

+1 to this feature request. Since very few providers post thumbs as a separate category (to my knowledge, only Fanart does it), it would be nice to be able to include backdrops in the Thumb search. Something like this, maybe:

The only problem with this is that Emby assumes the thumb contains the name of the series in the image, but you can't make that assumption if there's going to be backdrops mixed in with them.

Most Emby apps that are looking or a backdrop or thumb will check both and display text accordingly as needed. This way you don't have to duplicate the wrong image types in your saved files.

[crusher11 1184]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

The only problem with this is that Emby assumes the thumb contains the name of the series in the image, but you can't make that assumption if there's going to be backdrops mixed in with them.

But there already are:

On 8/10/2021 at 8:41 PM, ebr said:

FYI in pretty much all instances, if an item doesn't have a thumb, we already show the backdrop in its place instead.

 

 But the main point is that TMDB langage backdrops do contain the title, and those are the ones OP wants to use as the thumb. Which can't be done now that those backdrops are hidden. There's a feature request to include TMDB language backdrops in the thumb search, and that would also address this request.