A Guide to Creating a Free Photo Screen Saver

Introduction

Have you ever wanted to create a screen saver of your favorite photos? Sure, Windows XP has a built in slideshow screensaver, but not everyone runs on the latest Microsoft OS. Besides, who wants to email grandma 15 separate image files plus a page of instructions on where to put the files and how to configure the slideshow screensaver to work? This little guide uses some free (for home use) software to create a simple screen saver for Windows. The resulting screen saver file (yes, it's all stored in a single .scr file) can be emailed and installed as easily as a Desktop background.

Get some screen saver making software?

There are probably dozens of programs out there to help you create a custom screen saver of your digital pictures. That said, in preparing for this article, I did not have to ask Google to find me a good program. Instead, this entire article began serendipitously, when I discovered the screen saver export feature of IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) - it is a simple program for viewing and working with graphics, and it's free for non-commercial use. We'll be using that software, so if you want to follow the instructions in this article, go grab and install IrfanView.

A screen saver making we go...

It's pretty easy to make your own screen saver in IrfanView, really, all it is is a slideshow - sorry, no transitional effects or background music for this. If you have recommendations for more advanced software with these types of features, make a post in our forum. For clarity's sake, I'm using IrfanView 3.85 - I would expect the process to be quite similar in recent past, and near future versions of this popular program.

Choose the image files with which you want to create a screen saver.
Open IrfanView from the "Start" menu.
In IrfanView, from the Menu Bar choose "File", then "SlideShow".
Select image files and add them to your slideshow - they can be from anywhere on your computer. Put them in the order that you want them to display. Unless you decide to use the random image order options, then it would not matter in which order your files are added to the list.
Once you've added all your files, click the "Save as EXE/SCR file" button. For a screen saver, you want to choose "Create SCR file" in the next dialog box.
Then select "Create" and the screen saver should be magically created for you.

This single screen shot of the screen saver slide show selection screen will make it clear how easy it is!

Misc.

You can also create an "EXE" file that you can double click on to display the slideshow. If you aren't too familiar with file extensions, ".exe" files can be thought of as programs in Windows, and ".scr" files are screen savers. This might be useful as a way to very easily share slideshows.
You may run into problems emailing a .scr file. Many viruses have used this file format in the past, so many email systems will not let such files through, even if you know it's a simple, legitimate, slideshow.
In Windows XP, you can install your screen saver by simply browsing in Windows Explorer to the folder in which you created the file in IrfanView. Right-click on the .scr file and select Install.
Questions or comments? Visit the forum!

Published on: 2003-12-30 (6685 reads)

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