By now, many of us have made the switch to digital cameras from film cameras. If you are like me, the one thing you may have noticed when you use digital is that you wind up taking a lot more pictures than you used to because you don't have to worry about film processing costs.
But, what do you do with all those extra pictures? The first thing you probably do is go through and get rid of all the really bad photos. But, usually that still leaves many, many really good pictures...usually of family, friends, places and events. But, instead of sitting in a shoebox, they now reside on your computer, taking up valuable hard drive space. You can, of course, copy them to CD's and DVD's and remove them from your hard drive, but then your newly created CD's and DVD's go into a shoebox, perhaps never to be seen again.
Here are a couple of solutions where you might put some of your best pictures and view them on a more frequent basis: Take your best photos and turn them into either computer wallpaper and/or screensavers. It isn't that hard to do and I am going to recommend a couple of programs so you can do either or both for free.
Let's talk first about screensavers. Screensavers were once used for just what the name implies...saving your screen from being burned in by an image that was on the screen far too long. Those days are long gone as today's computer screens are immune from burn-in. Today, we use screensavers for fun. After so many minutes of non-use, your screensaver program automatically activates itself and shows things on your screen. Microsoft built several fun screensavers right into Windows.
But, why not create your own screensaver and use it to show your favorite digital pictures? Our friends at CNET recently posted a short article on how to do it. It is worth reading to get of feel for how to do it and what can be done with your own screensaver, although the software they recommend costs $40.
There is a free software program out there called "Dcat Screen Saver,"that has received the highest ratings from reviewers and will allow you to include both audio and video in your screensaver. It has many many transition effects you can use to go from one picture to another plus you control the time that each picture is on the screen. It gives you a lot of control over what images are used and how they are used, so it is worth considering if you want to customize a screensaver for your computer.
Wallpapers are little different than screensavers. In case you don't know, wallpaper is the image you have on the screen when you don't have any programs running or when you press your "Show Desktop" icon. Usually, you can only show one wallpaper at a time and you have to go into Windows to change it.
There are free programs out there like "Webshots" that do a nice job with both wallpaper and screensavers, although you have to pay money to get the most of them. And they are showing other people's beautiful pictures, not yours.
If you want create your own wallpaper, control its use, and do it on the cheap using your images, you might try the free version of "Wallpaper Master." It comes in both a free and pro version, but the free version will probably work just fine for most of us. You get complete control of how your wallpaper works on your computer. You can create different categories and have up to 5,000 pictures in each category. There are far too many features to list here, so I suggest you visit their website to learn more.
I can't think of a better way to put your mostly unseen photographs to work than to create your own screensaver and wallpaper. Why not give it a try and see what I mean.
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