PC equivalent of Mac OSX screen savers

January 23, 2004 1:52 PM

I'm looking for a PC equivalent of the Mac OSX default beaches/nature/cosmos/etc screen savers. I've yet to see anything on the PC that can gently zoom/pan its images like that. Ideally this would be something that would allow me to use my own images.
posted by tirade to computers & internet (5 answers total)

Install iPhoto, and make a screensaver from your photos. I accidentally did this last week and I love it, it does the panning and zooming and everything. I'm not sure if it's in the old version but it's definitely in the new version of iPhoto that came with iLife.
posted by mathowie at 3:17 PM on January 23, 2004

Matt, somehow I don't think iPhoto is "a PC equivalent" -- presumably meaning Windows PC. Google turns up Imagematics SlideShow for creating screensavers with pan and zoom, but at $50, it seems a little steep. I'd be surprised if there weren't something cheaper/freer/better out there.
posted by majick at 3:31 PM on January 23, 2004

Well, it's called the Ken Burns effect. There are a couple of packages that will create MPEG2 or DVDs from your photographs using the effect such as PictureToTV

I'm not very familiar with Windows any more though but that's about the best that google came up with.
posted by substrate at 6:24 PM on January 23, 2004

For the record, yes, I was looking for a Windows version of the same effect. I've spent time looking for something via google in the past, without luck, so I thought I'd give it a shot here. I never knew what it was actually called, though, so that may help in the future.
posted by tirade at 10:28 AM on January 24, 2004

Adobe Photoshop Album has a free Special Edition with a slideshow that seems to cover a lot of these transitions, though I'm not sure it's something you can rig up as a screensaver. Also, there's a "My Pictures" slideshow built into Windows XP which displays photos from, you guessed it, the My Pictures folder.
posted by anildash at 8:45 PM on January 26, 2004