Screen Saver on the local computer

gPhotoShow can be used as a screen saver on the local computer, this means it can display pictures and videos while you are not using the computer. In this quick start tutorial you will see how to configure the screen saver. 

As a quick start take a look at this video, it shows you how to open gPhotoShow Pro settings and perform a quick setup.

Setting gPhotoShow as default screen saver and opening its settings window is a little different on each windows version, here is how to open screen saver settings on different windows versions:

Windows 11

Right click on the desktop (or open settings), go to "Personalisation", "Lock Screen" and choose "Screen Saver Settings"

 

Windows 11 Personalise

Windows 11 Lock Screen

 

Windows 11 Screen Saver

 

Windows 10

Open windows settings, go to "Personalization", "Lock Screen" and choose "Screen Saver Settings"

Windows 10 Start

 

Windows 10 settings

 

Windows 10 Personalization

 

A quicker way is to double click on the desktop icon installed by gPhotoShow or use the shortcuts in the start menu:

Desktop shortcut

 

Start menu shortcut

 

Once you opened the Screen Saver Configuration applet you can choose gPhotoShow as your default screen saver:

 

Windows Display Applet

 

Next step is to configure gPhotoShow Pro. Click on the "Settings" button. The main window of gPhotoShow will open:

gPhotoShow Pro Main Window

This is the gPhotoShow main window, the tree on the left allows you to choose various sections where you can configure specific options. To display a section click on its name, the content of the page will change.

  • Images: basic settings for pictures

  • Display Options: settings to control pictures resize and display

  • Information: settings to control which info to display over images. For example here you can configure gPhotoShow to display file name or Exif / IPTC / XMP metadata fields over pictures.

  • Transitions: transition effects. Here it is possible to choose transition effects or set Pan&Zoom

  • Scrapbook: Scrapbook mode. When is enabled gPhotoShow first displays a background image then overlays several smaller pictures until it finds available space or a file of another type is found (for example a video)

  • Panoramic Images: basic settings for panoramic images. Panoramic images are images where the horizontal side is much wider than normal pictures so they don't look well when resize to fit the screen so gPhotoShow offers you another way to see them, they are scrolled across the screen.

  • Video and Animations: basic settings for video files

  • Web and 360 Panoramas: basic settings for web pages and spherical panoramas

  • Files options: in this sections there are settings to filter file names and to control the display order

  • Slideshow options: options for the slideshows, for example you can configure mouse actions and hot keys used during the slideshow

  • Global Exclusions : options to exclude files from slideshow with filters on file names or file dates

  • Filters: settings to choose which files to display on each monitor. For example it is possible to display only horizontally oriented images or pictures with a rating greater than 1

  • Sound and Music: basic settings for audio files played during the slideshow. For example here you can configure a background music.

  • Multiple monitors: specific settings for multiple monitors systems

  • Plug-Ins: in this section you can configure installed PlugIns

  • System Settings: in this section you can set some system wide options. For example you can set gPhotoShow as logon screen saver (screen saver the runs when no user is logged in)

In the section "Images" you can enter some basic settings for pictures. gPhotoShow Pro has been designed to work with huge pictures collections (some users have collections of over 100,000 pictures) so you can't add single images, you can only add folders. However this shouldn't be a limitation, probably you already have all your pictures inside a single folders tree so you can simply add in this window the base folder and gPhotoShow will automatically display all your pictures.

Click on "Add Directory..." to add a folder containing pictures to the folders list. Then adjust the delay time between images (the time each image is displayed on the screen).

When you click on "Add Directory..." a window similar to this will appear:

Browse for folder

Choose the folder where you keep your pictures.

gPhotoShow offers several transition effects, the standard ones don't need any additional component while others need GDI+ and DirectX 9.0 correctly installed. When using standard 2D effects gPhotoShow starts quickly but some effects have a high cpu usage. On the opposite DirectX offers smooth animations without a heavy cpu load but it needs a display adapter with hardware support for DirectX 9.
Pan & Zoom animation is an alternative to static image display, it is performed by slowly enlarging (or reducing) images while moving them horizontally. Start with default parameters then take a look at the online help to see how to set them according to your taste.

gPhotoShow Transitions

 

If you wish to display video files just click on "Video and Animations"

Video and Animations

In the same way as the images section you can add here the folders where you store your video and configure some basic options. Normally when playing video files gPhotoShow waits for the video to finish then skips to the next file. However if you have long videos and don't wish to watch everything you can set a maximum movie duration time, when a movie reach the time set in that field gPhotoShow will stop it and jumps to the next file. If you don't want to set a maximum time just enter a high value, for example 999999

If you wish to listen some music while the screen saver is running click on "Sounds and Music":

Sounds and Music

In this window you can add folders where you keep your music files and gPhotoShow will play them while displaying your pictures.

At this point you are ready to see gPhotoShow in action. Click on "OK" and wait for the screen saver to start or start the Preview form the windows applet.

Advanced Settings

gPhotoShow is a very powerful and flexible screen saver so it has plenty of options that allows you to adapt the software to your specific needs. The procedure takes a little more time but allows you to get the maximum from gPhotoShow Pro.

Click on "Display Options" this page will be displayed:

Display Options

Here you can modify image resize settings, for example if you always wish your pictures to fill the screen you can choose "Stretch image to fit the screen" or "Crop image to fit the screen". You can also enable automatic image rotation (this will work only if your camera saves this information) and panoramic image detection. If gPhotoShow finds that an image is a panoramic image it will scroll the picture across the screen using the settings in the section "Panoramic Images"

Panoramic Images

In the section "Panoramic Images" you can add the folder where you keep you panoramas. While gPhotoShow can auto-detect panoramic images if you keep them in separate folders it is better to add them here not in the images section.

If you wish to overlay information over pictures click on "Information":

Info and Colors

Here you can configure various options, for example if you are used to add an image description using the Exif "Description" field here you can configure gPhotoShow to display that description. The fields in the IPTC/XMP section allows you to easily get caption and description entered using windows Vista. Advanced settings are also available, if you enable the Advanced option the central part of the window will change and will allow you to configure Header and Footer. Both can be fully customized and located in any place on the page. They can contain fixed text entered by you or any Exif, IPTC or XMP field.

gPhotoShow Pro Advanced Information

It is possible you don't wish to display all pictures you have in your folders, for example if you are used to assign a rating or keywords to your pictures it is possible you wish to display only pictures with a certain rating or keywords. Or maybe you wish to display only horizontally oriented pictures. All this can be done in the "Filters and Exclusions" section:

gPhotoShow Pro Filters

In this section for each monitor it is possible to set what to display. If you have more than one monitor you could display videos on one monitor and pictures on another.
If the option "When one monitor finishes files list..." is enabled all files list of all monitors are rebuilt when one finishes. When you use filters and one monitor has much less files to display than others this could cause a frequent reset of files list so it is better to leave that option disabled.

If you are using a multiple monitors system you can configure gPhotoShow to use all available monitors:

Multiple Monitors

When you are satisfied with the settings simply click on OK and gPhotoShow is ready to run !