Document icon in Finder window differs from Get Info icon

I've been noticing unexpected document icons in Finder windows for quite some time.
This is especially true for PDF files. Since the early days of Mac OS X, I've configured my Macs to open PDF files in Adobe Reader, and I'm accustomed to seeing an Adobe PDF document icon on each PDF file. For some time, I've been seeing different PDF icons, e.g., a document with fuzzy text lines and a black ring binding on the left edge.
I thought this might be a custom icon. But when I do a Get Info on the PDF file, the conventional Adobe PDF icon appears in the Get Info window.
Is this different between the Finder icon and the Get Info icon a bug or a feature?
-- Ward

It's a feature. Any window that has the View Options set to "Show Icon Preview" will do that. It actually is rather handy in a folder that is set to icon view, with nice BIG icons, you can often see the first page (which is what is displayed) clearly enough to recognize exactly what the file is. In List view it isn't at all helpful, nor is it helpful in those cases where you have icon view set, but the icons are quite small (as is the case on my Desktop, and, I suspect, on most people's Desktops). A pdf that has multiple pages will additionally show the "binder" along the left edge. The Finder is drawing these custom icons on the fly from the contents of the file. The only way to defeat it is to turn of the Show Icon Preview for the folder(s) where you don't want an essentially useless and often counter-productive icon. Do that from the Finder's View menu item, Show View Options. Oh, and every folder has different options for each view. So you can turn it off for List view, but have it turned on for icon view, where it might actually be useful.
Francine
Francine
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Message was edited by: macjack

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Message was edited by: Thomas Camilleri
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Document icon in Finder window differs from Get Info icon

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