Do You Know How To Make Your Own Screen Saver?

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I am the kind of person who likes to personalize everything I do. My yahoo homepage is an extension of my personality. I often spice it up a bit with new and exciting things. I have a lot of pictures on my computer. My daughters are always emailing me pictures of the grandkids and other wonderful parts of their lives. I have added all these pictures on my computer and set my screen saver as a slide show. Now when I am not on my computer, my family pictures just keep reminding me of the things that are most important to me , my family. A few months ago, my brother and his family came to visit and my computer was on so naturally my slide show started. I was taking to my brother and I noticed that everyone was looking in the direction of my computer, I wondered what was going on and then my brother said “How did you do that?” they were all admiring my screen saver. You can use your pictures to make a slide show to be used as your screen saver also. It is so easy to do. These directions are for Windows XP Windows XP makes it simple to organize your pictures. Windows XP even provides a default folder called My Pictures to help with organizing your pictures. I recommend creating your own subfolders within the My Pictures folder for easy access to your pictures later on. After all, you won’t be able to forget where your pictures are if you copied them into a folder with just “pictures” in the title! So, before you copy your pictures, let’s create a new subfolder for them. First, access the My Pictures folder through the Start menu. Click on Start, My Documents and then My Pictures. This will display the My Pictures window. I recommend setting the My Pictures folder to display in a Thumbnail view. This view allows you to see small versions of your pictures in the My Pictures window instead of just picture names. To set this view, use the View menu and select Thumbnails. To create a new folder, click on the Make a new folder link under the File and Folder Tasks menu to the left. A new folder will be displayed in the My Pictures window with the name "New Folder" highlighted in blue. You can type in a new name for the folder while it is highlighted in blue. Or, you can select the folder and click on the Rename this folder link in the File and Folder Tasks menu Make sure you give the folder a descriptive name so that you will know in the future what this folder contains. A picture from your vacation pictures could be named “Family Vacation 2007,” for example. Now, you are ready to copy your pictures into the new folder. Once the pictures are copied over, you can customize the folder to optimize it for pictures. To customize the folder, right click on it and choose Properties from the pop up menu. Select the Customize tab from the Folder Properties dialogue box. Use the “Use this folder type as a template” drop down list to select the Photo Album template. You can also select a picture to be displayed on the folder icon by clicking on the Choose Picture button under the Folder Pictures section. You should be able to select one of the pictures in the folder to be displayed on the folder. Click OK to save this setting. The picture will only be displayed on the folder while using the thumbnail view. Click Apply and OK to save your customizations and close the Folder Properties dialogue box. You have just created a photo album for your pictures! When you open this folder, the pictures will be displayed in a film strip type view The first picture in the folder will be displayed in a larger size with the other pictures in the folder displayed along the bottom, in smaller thumbnail versions. You can use the horizontal scroll bar to see all the thumbnail images. Also, note that beneath the first picture, there are four icons. The blue arrow icons will allow you to view the next or previous pictures in the folder. The green and blue buttons allow you to rotate your pictures so they are displayed correctly. Once you have your photo album set up with all the pictures rotated so they are displayed correctly, it’s time to think about sharing your pictures as a slideshow. Open your new photo album. To start a slideshow of your pictures, click on “View as a slideshow” in the Picture Tasks menu to the left. A full screen slideshow of your pictures will begin. Notice that you have a toolbar at the top left. There are controls for Play, Pause, Previous, Next and Close. The slideshow will advance the pictures automatically. Although, if you want to speed up the process, you can advance them using the next button. The slideshow will loop until you end it by clicking the Close button. A slideshow is a great way for sharing your pictures quickly and easily with others! Plus, it's so simple to put one together using a folder customized just for your pictures. Now You too can see you pictures all the time.