COOL Way to View Your Photos !!!

You Take Great Photos and You Want to Enjoy Them

I like viewing my photos.  I have an electronic picture frame, but frankly, I forget to turn it on and it just takes up space on my desk.  I looked into options for displaying photos on my PC.  Obviously, I can set up a screen saver to play a slide show, but I probably won't watch a screen saver.

I discovered a way to set up a slide show on my desktop display !!!

Here's a screen shot of my desktop:

My desktop changes the photo every 10 minutes.

How did I do this?

Set Up the Windows Desktop

Now, these are Windows 10 instructions, but I understand earlier Windows versions, back to Windows 7 I believe, have the same type of features.  I suspect Mac computers can do the same.

Create a folder for your desktop photos.  My folder happens to be F:\Laptop Monitor\Laptop.  Next step is to set up the Windows desktop to display a slide show.

Right click on your desktop, and click Personalize:

• Select Themes
• Select Theme Settings
• Select Desktop Background

 

• Set up your desktop as you wish. At minimum, set:  
• Background to Slideshow
• Album to the folder you created above
• Change Picture Every: how often you want photos to change
• I recommend Choose to Fit set to Center.

 Here's my settings.

 

Prepare Desktop Photos

OK, now prepare and store your photos for your desktop display. 

Don't overwrite the original photo.  Save a copy to your desktop photo folder.  You may want the original for another purpose later, like printing.

Re-size and save photos for your desktop display. 

Re-sizing isn't absolutely necessary, but I didn't want my icons on top of my photos, nor did I want Windows sizing them for me. 

As most of you will use a variety of photo editing software, I won't get into details for re-sizing.  Re-sizing, when available tends to be VERY simple, so check your photo editor.  BUT, if you need some help learning how, let me know which software by name.

For my 1440x900 laptop display, I found re-sizing to 1296x810 pixels worked great.  Experiment with re-sizing for your monitor, display and layout.  

HINT: Set up some sort of preset or automated action you can easily apply to future photos you want to include.  For example, in Lightroom, set up a Preset, or Photoshop an Action, to re-size and save future photos.

Save the re-sized files to your desktop folder. Save as a JPG/JPEG file.  IF you can set quality, try 6-8 out of 10 or mid-range.  If quality isn't an option, don't worry about it, just save JPG. :-)

Manage Slideshow Folders

Want to change the photos displayed?  Simply re-size and save new ones, or delete one from the desktop folder.  No need to mess with the desktop settings anymore.

Any questions or help I can offer, let me know.