I was wondering if it’s possible to apply a picture for external instruments you’ve setup. So if I want a picture to show for my SR-16 or Mutator in the right pane like for all my VST’s, where do you need to place the image file and then how do you assign it to the instrument?
Is this possible, and if so what image format should be used and is there a size or resolution limitation?
Hi,
The images are stored in the Documents/Steinberg/VST Thumbnails folder. They are stored as *.png and the resolution is 1092x996. But I don’t know, how to name the file.
Hello Martin,
Thanks for the reply. I took a look at the existing image files at that location and there’s no way to try to decode those file names! I try a few things but I don’t think this is going to work. Tried drag and drop of the png file onto the external instrument in the right pane with no success. What I think would be a good solution is putting a ‘Load Image’ icon and function on the instrument panel for the external instrument, similar to where the camera is to take images of third party plugins.
For whatever it’s worth, I took a look at the directory and the names, and those names reminded me of common name formats in the Windows Registry, so I searched for the start string of one plugin I recognized in the registry, and, sure enough, I found a match. However, it was in an area of the registry associated with Cakewalk software, not Cubase. Also, even if it were a Steinberg/Cubase area, there would be the question as to whether there would be an equivalent entry for the external plugins that would allow finding the string in order to take out the dashes to create the correct PNG file name. In any case, here is what I’m talking about (specifically for the VST3 version of PSP B-Scanner in this case):
Hi,
Great hint, @rickpaul !
It’s the UID of the plug-in. You can find it in the VstPlugInfoV4.xml file. In this list, I can also see my external instrument. So I suppose, this should work.
Thanks @rickpaul and @Martin.Jirsak ! I’ll look into that later and let you know how it goes!
Oh my, that actually works.
It seems the pixel size does not require a fixed value. But all files are 24bit PNG files.
Cool. I have a feeling you could set the transparency color in the PNG file to avoid the white (in the case of the JV-2080) background. Guessing Cubase is probably doing something like that in its plugin photo cases since there are various shapes of the actual plugins, but they don’t usually have a fixed color background, just the menu background.
I might not be a star in the music biz but my photoshop skills are even worse. 
Excellent! I’m off to setup my Mutator and SR-16 then.
Thanks all!
Excellent detective work everyone!
OK, how did you get that to work? I opened the VstPlugInfoV4.xml file for Cubase 13, found my SR-16 and Mutator, copied their UID’s and searched the whole registry (one at a time) . Neither were found.
Anyone have an idea where I went wrong?
Hi,
I understand it so, the registry comes from Cakewalk. Once you find the UID code, name the image (png) by using the UID. This is the link, hope Cubase assigns it to the plug-in.
Sure, don’t go to the registry at all.
Copy the UID from VstPlugInfoV4.xml and make it the filename of your .png file. So the name format is {UID}.png
AH, that makes sense actually. Thanks!
I cannot find VstPlugInfoV4.xml for the life of me. I have Cubase 14 Pro on MacOS Sequoia 15.5 . What is the common path to VstPlugInfoV4.xml ?
It’s located here:
/Users/Username/Library/Preferences/Cubase 14/VstPlugInfoV4.xml
EDIT: Just an FYI, for this function and for general “snapshots” taken of the VSTi within Cubase to create the thumbnail, be aware that those images sourced from a Retina display can be very large (several meg in some cases). When you run Cubendo, these thumbnails take up active RAM in your system. The thumbnail only need be something quite small like a scale to 480.
I strongly suggest (even for the Windows folks) that you are at least conscious of this and potentially take steps to minimize your RAM use for these files by using an Automator workflow on your Mac to automatically scale “selected” images as you continue to update your thumbnails. By way of example, I just recreated and updated my external ARP2600 thumbnail (which is what this thread is about) and grabbed another big(ger) one:
In Automator, just do something like this - I choose 480 as my scale root:
With those images selected, I just run my Automator job and bingo-bango, the images are automatically rescaled:
I recommend copying your ~/Users/Username/Documents/Steinberg/VST Thumbnails folder first in case you make a mistake, or just add a Copy Items workflow to Automator first.
I saved over 2gig of RAM this way after my first Snapshot Spree where I went nuts creating snapshots for all my VSTs. That’s a lot of wasted RAM for some systems.
Anyway, thought I’d mention that.
Does anyone have the location pathway of the VstPlugInfoV4.xml on a windows machine?
Struggling to find it!
I use a Mac for Cubase myself, but I would suspect in Windows it would be in the ‘AppData’ folder, which is hidden by default. You can type appdata in a Run command to get to it though. Or, go to C:\Users\username\appdata
Then, search for the filename from there…
It’s probably in the ‘Local’ folder
This is the path for Cubase Pro 15:
C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 15_64