Thread: Making photos into a screensaver

What better way to make a screensaver personal than to use a selection of favourite photos? Windows can do this so there is no need to download and install any extra software. First, let's take a look at the screensaver options window in XP (we'll look at Vista later in this article). This is found in the Display Properties dialogue box. Right-click on an empty part of the Desktop and then left-click on Properties and then left¬click on the Screen Saver tab to see all of the screensaver settings.

The drop down menu is used to select which screensaver you wish to use - click one and a preview of it appears in the dialogue box's monitor screen. There are 11 screensavers provided with Wmdows XP and it is easy to add more. The Wait option is used to set how long the computer will wait before starting the screensaver. The various 3D screensavers can look impressive, but are a little impersonal for our tastes. The My Pictures Slideshow is much better. Left-click on the dropdown menu and select My Pictures Slideshow. The screen at the top of the window should change to show a preview of what the screensaver will look like.



Unless told otherwise, Windows will use all the images in the My Pictures folder, so you may decide that selecting a specific folder would be more appropriate. To do this, left-click on the Settings button. Left-click on the Browse to select a different folder to use. The other options in this window are used to change the size of the images and how often they change. Click on OK and then on Apply to save the changes. Left-click on the Preview button to check that the settings are correct. This starts the screensaver immediately. It works as normal, so moving the mouse will stop the screensaver