Looking for a particular screensaver

March 29, 2005 4:51 PM

I saw a simple, but stunning screensaver on a Mac, which was a slow zoom into images, and I'm trying to find something similar for XP. Thanks!

The screensaver selected images from a designated folder, and would slowly zoom into or out of them. A simple idea, but it was really beautiful, and far superior to the average slideshow screensaver. I've tried google, but screensavers are so bountiful that it's a needle in the haystack situation.

posted by tomble to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: That's the "ken burns effect" in iPhoto's slideshow mode, which is used by OS X's slideshow screensaver as well.
posted by mathowie at 4:57 PM on March 29, 2005

Best answer: After doing a quick google search for ken burns effect windows, I got this. Try it and see if it works.
posted by mathowie at 4:58 PM on March 29, 2005

Interestingly enough, Microsoft has a product that can do this, but it'll cost you $20.

On preview, mathowie's find is free, and after trying it out, looks like it does the trick.
posted by pmbuko at 5:04 PM on March 29, 2005

The other end of this, is that the moves are handled by Open GL...so they're going to look gorgeous and smooth. Don't know if the windows software will take advantage of this like the Mac SS do.
posted by filmgeek at 6:26 PM on March 29, 2005

For those of you with Linux boxes, the "GLSlideshow" screensaver has this effect.
posted by SPrintF at 7:38 PM on March 29, 2005

iSlideshow does use OpenGL (I looked at the source). It is buttery smooth indeed.
posted by zsazsa at 8:09 PM on March 29, 2005

Interesting.... but uncomfortably choppy on my 2 GHz machine.
posted by Doohickie at 8:22 PM on March 29, 2005

Response by poster: Wow, this looks really great on my home computer (my work computer hated it). I am still amazed by how simple zooming can add so much to a static image - I feel like I'm walking into landscape photographs. Thanks again Mathowie.
posted by tomble at 12:04 AM on March 30, 2005

The Zoomquilt is a collection of images specially made to be slowly continously zoomed, screensaver or otherwise.
posted by schyler523 at 12:35 AM on March 30, 2005

Nostalgic Screensaver. Free.
posted by tayknight at 6:04 AM on March 30, 2005

Second the nostalgic. Cool feature: if your dual headed it puts different images on each monitor.
posted by Mitheral at 10:15 PM on March 30, 2005