13.2. One-Click Desktop Backdrop

13.1. Building a Custom Screen Saver

Mac OS X's screen saver feature is so good, it's pushed more than one Windows user over the edge into making the switch to Mac OS X. When this screen saver kicks in (after several minutes of inactivity on your part), your Mac's screen becomes a personal movie theater. The effect is something like a slideshow, except that the pictures don't simply appear one after another and sit there on the screen. Instead, they're much more animated. They slide gently across the screen, zooming in or zooming out, smoothly dissolving from one to the next .

Mac OS X comes equipped with a few photo collections that look great with this treatment: forests, space shots, and so on. But let the rabble use those canned screen savers. You, a digital master, can use your own photos as screen saver material.

13.1.1. Meet the Screen Saver

When you're ready to turn one of your own photo collections into a screen saver, fire up iPhoto. Collect the photos in an album, if they're not in one already (Chapter 5), and then select the album in the Source list. Or, if you're using Mac OS X 10.3 or later, simply highlight the photos you want to use as screen saver fodder, whether they're in an album or not.

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Tip: Horizontal shots fill your monitor better than vertical ones ”the verticals have fat black bars on either side to fill the empty space.If your camera captures images at a 3:2 width-to-height ratio instead of 4:3, or if you have an Apple widescreen monitor (like the 15-inch PowerBook screen or the 17-inch iMac screen), there's one more step. You might want to crop the photos, or copies of them, accordingly to maximize their impact.

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Finally, click the Desktop icon at the bottom iPhoto panel (or, if you don't see it there, choose Share Desktop).

Figure 13-1. In Mac OS X 10.3 and later, all of your iPhoto albums are listed in the Screen Saver panel of the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences window. Just pick the one you want to use as a screen saver, or click iPhoto Selection (in the upper part of the list) to "play" whatever pictures you've selected in iPhoto. Mac OS X turns your photos into a smooth, full-screen slideshow.

You go straight to the Desktop & Screen Saver panel of System Preferences (shown in Figure 13-1). Here's the key step (a change from iPhoto 4): Click the Screen Saver tab. You'll see that in the System Preferences "source list," something called iPhoto Selection is selected. Set up your screensaver options as described in the box on the facing page, and then close System Preferences.

Ready to view the splendor of your very own homemade screen saver? If you have the patience of a Zen master, you can now sit there, motionless, staring at your Mac for the next half an hour or so ”or as long as it takes for Mac OS X to conclude that you're no longer working and finally begin displaying your images on the screen.

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Tip: Your screen saver slideshows look best if your pictures are at least the same resolution as your Mac's monitor. (In most cases, if your digital camera has a resolution of 1 megapixel or better, you're all set.)If you're not sure what your screen resolution is, go to System Preferences and click the Displays icon (or just consult the Displays mini-menu next to your menu bar clock, if it appears there).

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UP TO SPEED
Screen Saver Basics

You don't technically need a screen saver to protect your monitor from burn-in. Today's energy-efficient CRT monitors wouldn't burn an image into the screen unless you left them on continuously for two years , and flat-panel screens never burn in.

No, screen savers are about entertainment, pure and simple.

In Mac OS X, when you click a module's name in the screen saver list, you see a mini version of it playing back in the Preview screen.

You can control when your screen saver takes over your monitor. For example, the "Start screen saver" slider lets you specify when the screen saver kicks in (after what period of keyboard or mouse inactivity).

When you click the Hot Corners button, you're presented with a pane than lets you turn each corner of your monitor into a hot spot. Whenever you roll your cursor into that corner, the screen saver either turns on instantly (great when you happen to be shopping on eBay at the moment your boss walks by) or stays off permanently (for when you're reading onscreen or watching a movie).

If you use Mac OS x 10.3 or later, you can use two corners for controlling the screen saver and the other two to activate Expos (Mac OS X's window-hiding feature).

In any case, pressing any key or clicking the mouse always removes the screen saver from your screen and takes you back to whatever you were doing.

The Options button reveals the additional settings illustrated here, some of which are very useful. Turn off "Crop slides to fit on screen," for example, if you want the Mac to show each photo, edge to edge (even if it has to use black bars to fill the rest of your monitor); otherwise , it enlarges each photo to fill the screen, often lopping off body parts in the process. (If "Crop slides" is on, you can also turn on "Keep slides centered" to prevent the Mac from panning across each photo.)

And turning off "Zoom back and forth," of course, eliminates the majestic, cinematic zooming in and out of successive photos that makes the screen saver look so darned cool.