A way to show off your photographs

Hi, boys and girls.

I have developed an unusually capable screen saver for photographers that runs on Windows XP. (Microsoft claims that the libraries I am using will let it run on other versions of Windows but I have no way to verify this.) You can get this screen saver from me, free of charge. Go up on the following PBase gallery to find out how, to read about the screen saver in greater detail, and see screen shots of its control panel along with explanations of what you’re seeing.

http://www.pbase.com/fjp/screen_saver_2005_04_apr_11

In brief, the screen saver has the following capabilities:

1. It is color-space aware: it will display images with embedded Adobe RGB profiles as vividly as sRGB: no washed out images because Windows is displaying an Adobe RGB image in the sRGB color space.

2. Multiple monitors are supported. This is important for digital photographers, many of whom have more than one monitor attached to their computers, to ease the pain of post-processing workflows in Photoshop. You can display the same or different images on each monitor.

3. Displays JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG, and other file formats.

4. You can specify a list of directory paths or individual files in any order, and exclude specific paths and files from displaying.

5. You can specify the following behaviors: the display interval in seconds (or fractions of a second), whether to fit the image to the screen exactly, whether to display the path of each image along with the image itself, and which file formats to select for display (e.g. you could exclude BMP and GIF files, for example).

6. You can specify the sort order of displaying images: by file name, file size, creation date, or randomly, and whether to sort forward or backwards on the criteria.

7. You can specify the directory type for display among several criteria. The screen saver always searches directory trees, not just top-level directories. But if you wish you can exclude from displaying certain subdirectories within a tree.

8. You have manual (as well as automatic) control over the display of images. You can use the arrow keys to move forwards and backwards through your images at your own rate, to override the automatic progression through your images. Normally pressing any key will stop the screen saver from executing and restore the display of your computer’s desktop. The arrow keys are an exception and will not return you to your desktop.

9. Last but not least, the screen saver setup program supports context-sensitive help. If you don’t know what a specific control does, click on the question mark on the title bar. The mouse cursor will take the form of a question mark. Move the question mark cursor over the control you need help on, and left-click. Help will pop up explaining what the control does and how to use it.

Some of you may have obtained an earlier version of this screen saver that crashed. That bug was fixed long ago and I know of no bugs remaining in this screen saver. Every bug that has been reported has been fixed. It is well-tested and seems to be very solid. I am always open to fixing newly discovered bugs, however. Just let me know.

Here are a few screen shots from that gallery. Remember, go to the above specified gallery to find out how you can obtain your free, no strings attached, copy of the screen saver. This is not spam. There’s nothing in this for me, except seeing your pleasure in using it. I did this for myself and anyone else with a similar interest in automatically cycling through all their masterpieces on their computer screen.







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FJP

To get this screen saver, you have to send email to my home email address, but I'm at work from 7:00AM to 5:00PM PST, so I won't be able to reply to you until after 5:00.

I am at home today and so have been able to satisfy all the requests immediately. But I will be gone all this afternoon, so there will be a delay of several hours before I'm able to satisfy your request if you make it between 12:30PM and about 4:30PM PST.

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FJP

FJP,
Thanks for this program, I like it alot.
Chad
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D100 (see profile for the rest)
http://www.pbase.com/chad8912

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David
http://www.usefilm.com/artist/octane
Wildlife: http://neptune.atlantis-intl.com/dolphins/cpg132/index.php

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JCase

'We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium.' Ansel Adams
But the D 2 X is getting closer!

Wonderful. That's what I like to hear. Very courteous of you to reply, although I would prefer thank you's to come to me directly rather than on this forum, just as a courtesy to other members who aren't interested.

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FJP

I've had several attempts to deliver this thing to people who's email program is apparently blocking zip files. Then the attempt to send it just bounces back to me. Sending an attached .zip file is the only way at my disposal of sending you the screen saver, and if you have them blocked, you'll never get it.

I'm running Norton AntiVirus and I keep it up to date. It checks every one of my outgoing emails for viruses and will block the outgoing email if it finds a virus attached, if that's any consolation to you.
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FJP

Its working but I'm getting an error that I must select at least one file type. jpg was selected by default, I selected bmp in addition to jpg. All was well, I previewed the screensaver then went back into options then hit ok. I was then prompted to select at least 1 file type. I de-selected bmp and reselected it and all was fine.

Thanks,

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JCase

'We must remember that a photograph can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium.' Ansel Adams
But the D 2 X is getting closer!

Thanks for this report. I'll see if I can duplicate it and then fix it. If I can't duplicate it I will ask you for further clarification. Since there's nothing in this for me, however, I'll only send you the fix (and new people who ask for it). Too much trouble to resent to everyone else for such a minor glitch.
For a major crash, that's something different. Then I'd try to update everybody.

(What did I get myself into???)

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FJP

Yes - just sent you email.

Birger

can you send me the screensaver soft?

thanks
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http://www.phatimages.com

Respectfully, please do not ask for the screensaver through this forum. Go up on my PBase gallery, get instructions from there. All that does is prolong this thread. Go here:

http://www.pbase.com/fjp/screen_saver_2005_04_apr_11
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FJP

Frank,

fjp said:

...
I have developed an unusually capable screen saver for
photographers that runs on Windows XP.
...

Click to expand...

Yes, you have - received with thanks - works great!

Many thanks for generously sharing this - much appreciated.

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Regards, Paul.
http://www.rustydog.demon.co.uk/d70/

'Not everything that can be counted counts,
and not everything that counts can be counted.'

• Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Would you mind sending this to me also please.
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Regards

Glenn

I would be happy to. Send me email to make your request.

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FJP, Software Engineer

Since first posting this, about 50 people have ask for and received my screen saver. With so many people pounding on it (when only about 6 previous beta testers had their hands on it), issues were bound to show up that weren't noticed before. So I am making a bug-corrected version available for anyone who asks for it, including anyone who missed this the first time around.

If you want the bug-corrected screen saver, just ask for it at the following email address:

[email protected]

If you already have the screen saver and none of these issues bother you, please don't ask for it again.

The following changes were made to the first version that was posted:

1. The Setup program will claim you had not selected an image type the first time you tried to exit the program. This has been fixed.

2. If Num Lock was on, the arrow keys did not work for manually moving back and forth among the images. Now the arrow keys work whether Num Lock is on or off.

3. My first version would always recurse into subdirectories when you specified a directory to search. I've added an option to search only top-level directories.

4. The Help file was getting truncated at the end (it was too big for Windows to handle it). I fixed this by not being so verbose (a difficult task for me).

Problems remaining:

1. If your images are on a wireless network and the network signal disappears, the screen saver might crash. But this will not hurt your computer. I don't know how to fix this, and it may never get fixed. If you disconnect a wired network, my screen saver continues to run, but it will be stuck on the last image before disconnect, until you reconnect. Then images will start advancing again on your display.

2. I have a small amount of evidence that Logitech keyboards don't follow the Windows standard the way the arrow keys work, so you might have problems in some modes with Logitech keyboards.

3. Multi-monitor issue: If you have configured your multiple monitors to run as one large virtual monitor, my screen saver will only see the one large virtual montor, and will display images split across the physical monitors.

4. Adding files while screen saver is running: If you have a remote device that is adding images to a directory chosen for display by the screen saver setup program and additional images are added while the screen saver is running, the screen saver will not pick them up until you stop the screen saver and start it running again. This is because the screen saver builds the list of images to display when it first enters screen saver mode and does not look in the directories again until it restarts. I believe that if this is what you want to do, you need a program dedicated to doing it, not a screen saver. It would be possible to write such a program. I'm just surprised it doesn't seem to exist.

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FJP, Software Engineer

Here is a screen shot of the enhanced "Directory Type" tab in the screen saver. The new option, "Only Top Level Directories", limits the screen saver to looking only through top level directories for image files. All of the other options on this tab search the entire directory tree of every directory in the image list.



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FJP, Software Engineer