How To Make A Slideshow On Windows Xp

Technique

Save Time By
Using your ain pictures for your Windows desktop or screensaver
Called-for pictures — or fifty-fifty an entire slideshow — on a CD
Retrieving deleted pictures from your digital camera
Have yous ever deleted a picture on your digital photographic camera accidentally? Did you know that the easiest way to get that picture back (if it'due south possible at all) is by running an undelete programme on your PC?
Yep, you read that correct. Y'all can undelete a moving picture on your camera from your PC. Information technology's piece of cake, information technology's cheap, and it's then fast you won't believe it.
If you're running out of room on your hard drive and the problem is besides many pictures, don't waste product your time with compressing and selectively deleting the files y'all no longer desire. Instead, get a CD-R drive if y'all don't take ane already, and simply motility a big bunch of pictures to CD. They last longer, and the whole process takes but a few minutes.

You may already know that yous can view all the pictures in a folder every bit a slideshow. But yous can also practice these other things with your pictures:

Burn a CD with a slideshow.
Play the CD/slideshow on any Windows computer, non just a computer with Windows XP.
Apply all the pictures in a folder — or even a agglomeration of folders — for a screen saver. The screen saver randomly picks a movie, shows information technology on the screen for a while, and then moves on to another randomly chosen picture.
I show you how to do all that and more in this technique.
Putting Your Picture show on the Desktop
Do y'all accept a favorite picture show that you would like to apply as your Windows XP desktop?
Here's the fastest way to exercise it:
7. Choose Offset My Estimator and navigate to the moving-picture show yous want to put on your desktop.
2, Right-click the picture show and choose Set As Desktop Background.
Your Windows desktop may look corking. If and then, you're done!
More than likely, the picture you've chosen appears distorted (equally shown in Figure 41-one).
Usually, pictures pressed into service on the desktop are quite distorted.
• Figure 41-1: Commonly, pictures pressed into service on the desktop are quite distorted.
3, If you don't like the appearance of the motion picture, correct-click any open spot on the Windows desktop and choose Backdrop Desktop.

You see the Desktop tab of the Display Backdrop dialog box.

Ordinarily pictures appear distorted considering Windows assumes that you want them stretched to fill the available space on the desktop. In fact, yous have three options; you tin can stretch, center, or tile the paradigm.
4 From the Position drop-down list, selection one of the position options.
If y'all choose Eye, you can specify the color of the desktop that surrounds the picture.
In Figure 41-2, I chose to have the picture centered and to have the role of the desktop not taken up by the picture to be black.
Centered picture, black color. 5, Click OK.
• Figure 41-2: Centered motion-picture show, black colour. 5, Click OK.
You may be tempted to put active content on your desktop — Microsoft's creepy-crawly stock ticker or possibly a constantly updated Web page. Don't do it. Run into Technique 14 for details.
Using Your Pictures for a Screen Saver Slideshow
I talk about this nifty (and trivial-known) Windows XP feature in Technique 14. Here's the whole story on the My Pictures Screensaver.
Windows XP has a built-in screen saver that automatically cycles through all the pictures in a folder. In fact, it can cycle through all the pictures in a folder and all its subfolders. Don't know about you lot, simply on my PC, that can be one whole heckuvalot of pictures!
This feature rates as one of my favorites considering onetime pictures tend to become cached. Yous shoot them, await at 'em once or twice, and never see 'em again. But if you lot use this screen saver, everything old is new again — even those really, really bad shots of Aunt Mildred — which, come to call up of it, could be a good thing or a bad affair.

To use your pictures for a screen saver slideshow, follow these steps:

seven. Right-click whatever empty spot on the desktop.
ii. Choose Backdrop Screensaver.
The Screen Saver tab of the Display Properties dialog box appears.
3. In the Screen Saver drop-down box, cull My Pictures Slideshow. Then click Settings.
The My Pictures Screen Saver Options dialog box appears (equally shown in Effigy 41-3).
4. Click Browse and navigate to the binder that contains pictures you want to utilize for the screen saver.

• Effigy 41-3: Control the pictures here.
Pictures are randomly selected from the chosen folder likewise as any subfolders within the chosen binder.
five, Click OK.
The Display Properties box appears once again.
6. Click OK again.
Your screen saver is ready for use.
Called-for Pictures on a CD
Do y'all have about a hundred gajillion pictures on your PC eating up hard disk infinite?
Yeah. I thought so.
If y'all have a CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW drive, burning those pictures onto a CD, where they'll final for decades, is very easy. A CD certainly lasts longer than your difficult drive, providing you don't gum it upwards with one of those sticky CD labels (run across Fred Langa's experiences at world wide web. informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml? articleID=15800263&pgno=2). I talk nearly backing upward files in Technique threescore.

Burning pictures couldn't exist simpler:

1, Brand certain that your CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, or DVD-RW drive is installed and working.
two. Beginning Windows Explorer. (Just choose, say, Kickoff My Pictures or Kickoff My Estimator.)
iii. Navigate to the pictures you want to burn.
If yous're in a film or photo album binder (as shown in Figure 41-4), Copy to CD appears in the Motion picture Tasks list.
You lot can manually change a binder'southward type — in particular, y'all can plow whatsoever folder into a picture or photo album binder. For details, run into Technique 20.
A photo album folder.
• Figure 41-4: A photo anthology folder.
4, Select the picture(s) you want to fire; then click Copy to CD in the Moving picture Tasks listing. If Re-create to CD doesn't appear in the listing, right-click i of the selected files (or folders) and choose Send To CD Drive.
A small CD icon appears in the notification area, next to the clock.
v, Keep moving effectually Windows, gathering pictures that you want to burn.
In spite of what the Picture Chore list and right-click menu say, Windows actually copies the files you select to a staging area — a identify on your difficult drive that holds files temporarily, before you burn them to CD.
half dozen, When you lot're washed gathering files, choose Start My Reckoner your CD burner drive (whichever drive letter that is).
Windows shows you the contents of the CD's staging area, as shown in Figure 41-v.
7 Put a recordable CD in your CD burner and click Write These Files to CD.
The CD Writing Magician appears.
The CD burner's staging area.
• Figure 41-5: The CD burner'southward staging area.
8, Blazon the name y'all want to exist burned on the CD; then click Side by side.
If y'all've called too much information — likewise many pictures — the wizard alerts you (as shown in Figure 41-6).

• Figure 41-6: Can't fit ten pounds of pictures in a v-pound sack.
nine, If yous have also many pictures selected, don't exercise annihilation with the wizard. Instead, go back to the staging expanse and start deleting files or folders (right-click and cull Delete) until yous're under the size limit.
Don't worry — you aren't deleting the pictures. Y'all're merely removing them from the staging expanse.
Unfortunately, neither the magician nor Windows offers a handy list of folder sizes or suggestions for what to trim. What you tin can do is correct-click a folder, choose Properties, and see the folder's size. For example, the folder shown in Figure 41-7 is 46.2MB, which takes upwards about one-half of an 80MB CD.
The only way to see a folder's size is painstakingly slow.
• Figure 41-7: The just way to see a folder's size is painstakingly slow.
10. When you remember that you lot've deleted enough files or folders, become dorsum to the sorcerer, click Retry Writing the Files to CD At present (refer to Figure 41-6), and then click Next.
If yous withal accept likewise many pictures selected, yous get the warning once again. Sooner or afterward, y'all take your movie drove trimmed down to the bespeak where it can fit on the CD. At that point, the magician starts writing files to the CD. Depending on the speed of your burner, it can take xx minutes or more to fire a full CD.
11. When the wizard finishes, click Finish.
The sorcerer removes all the files from the staging area.
12. Immediately endeavour looking at the pictures on
the CD.
Chances are very adept that they're in excellent shape. Oh, and don't forget to label the CD with a Sharpie marking.

Called-for a Slideshow on a CD

If you followed the instructions in the preceding section, you take a CD filled with pictures. Plop that CD into whatever computer that has Windows XP on it and you lot can use the many Windows XP features to look at the pictures, copy them, and then on. In item, viewing all the pictures in a folder as a slideshow is piece of cake — just open the folder in Windows Explorer and choose View As Slideshow.
Merely what near your friends who don't have Windows XP? If you send the CD to people who don't have XP installed, they tin can open up the files, or (on most versions of Windows) view thumbnails of the pics. But they'll take a devil of a time watching the pictures as a slideshow — a feature that older versions of Windows merely don't take.
Fortunately, if y'all have the foresight, y'all can burn down the CD as a slideshow — i that runs on any version of Windows. This technique is quick, efficient, and surprisingly easy to perform afterward you figure out what to do.

To burn a slideshow to a CD, follow these steps:

ane. Start Internet Explorer and go to www.
microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/ powertoys.asp.
2. Download the Slideshow.exe file.
This is more complicated than it should be. The main PowerToys page identifies this particular PowerToy every bit the CD Slideshow Generator. The program listed for download on that page is
called Slideshow.exe, just when y'all download information technology, y'all find that the file is really chosen
SlideshowPowertoySetup.exe. Argh.
iii, After SlideshowPowertoySetup.exe is downloaded, run it.
Windows steps yous through a very unproblematic installation sorcerer.
The CD Slideshow Generator isn't a separate, stand up-lonely program. Instead, it works by inserting itself as an actress footstep in the CD Writing Wizard.
4 Follow Steps one through 7 in the preceding section ("Called-for Pictures on a CD") to assemble the pictures you lot want to burn down on the CD and first
the CD Writing Sorcerer.
5, Click Next on the first screen of the CD Writing Wizard.
You see a new selection to add a picture viewer to the CD.
6, Click Yep, Add A Picture Viewer; then click
Next.
The CD Slideshow Generator adds iii files to the CD being burned (as shown in Figure 41-8).
The CD Slideshow consists of three additional files burned to the CD.
• Figure 41-8: The CD Slideshow consists of iii additional files burned to the CD.
7 Follow Steps eight through 11 in the preceding section ("Burning Pictures on a CD") to keep burning the CD.
eight, After you finish creating the CD Slideshow, examination the CD by putting it into a machine that's running an before version of Windows.
A slideshow, such as the one shown in Figure 41-9, appears along with a very unproblematic gear up of control buttons in the upper-left corner. The slideshow runs all by itself if you don't push any buttons or click anything on-screen. Still, you can employ the control buttons or arrow keys in the obvious way to movement from moving picture to moving picture.
This slideshow runs on any version of Windows.
• Figure 41-9: This slideshow runs on whatever version of Windows.

Recovering Deleted Pictures on Your Camera

Tell me whether this has always happened to yous
I just clicked the wrong button on my digital photographic camera and deleted all the pictures I'd stored. I thought I had selected just one file, but my not-so-nimble fingers were working in preprogrammed mode, far faster than my encephalon. The internet result: an entire compact flash memory menu wiped out.
Surprisingly, unless your photographic camera manufacturer specifically has a program fix to do information technology, the fastest, easiest, best way to undelete files on your digital camera is through your PC.
Lots and lots of programs on the market place claim to resurrect dearly departed digital image files from your photographic camera. I'm sure nearly of them work (although I've bumped into several that don't, at to the lowest degree on my cameras).
But I've only hit one visitor that has the guts to let y'all download its software and use it to bring back two pictures for free. If y'all desire to undelete more, you have to pay $39.95 for the program. Simply the two-shot demo version of File Rescue Plus doesn't cost a matter. It'south cost effective and saves time, besides. Difficult to beat.

Here's how to test drive File Rescue Plus:

ane Start Internet Explorer and go to world wide web. softwareshelf.com.
ii. Pick your location and/or linguistic communication, and then click File Rescue Plus.
iii. Fill out the information class, making sure that you choose File Rescue Plus as the Production Download.
four. Click Submit.
5. Follow the directions to download
FileRescuePlusDemo.exe.
half dozen. After the download has finished, double-click
FileRescuePlusDemo.exe.
Follow the short installation wizard.
7 Connect the camera that contained the recently deceased movie(due south).
8. Choose Start All Programs Software Shelf File Rescue Plus to showtime File Rescue Plus.
The program asks about the File Scan mode (as shown in Effigy 41-ten).

• Effigy 41-10: You want to scan for deleted pictures.
9. Click Film Rescue; and then click OK.
File Rescue Plus asks you lot which drive to scan.
10. If you aren't sure which drive to use, choose Start My Computer and look for your photographic camera.
eleven. Cull the bulldoze that corresponds to your digital camera, and then click OK.
Burn Rescue Plus wants to know if the drive has been reformatted. Not probable.
12. Click the Partition (Drive) Has Not Been Reformatted . . . . Then click OK.
Fire Rescue Plus offers to evidence you thumbnails of the deleted files.
xiii. Click Show Me a Thumbnail of the Pictures Available to Be Recovered; and so click OK.
The first time I saw this happening, I could hardly believe my eyes. Fire Rescue Plus goes into the photographic camera, reconstructs the deleted files, and then presents them to yous (as shown in Figure 41-xi). This process takes a while, and then be patient.

• Figure 41-11: Fire Rescue Plus reaches into the photographic camera and reconstructs the files.
14. Click the file (or files) yous want to undelete; so click the icon on the main toolbar that looks like a figurer monitor with a life preserver in front of it. (I'm tempted to talk near computers as boat anchors, but never mind.)
Fire Rescue Plus asks where you want to put the reconstructed file (as shown in Figure 41-12).
If you lot put the recovered file back in the camera, you may overwrite a unlike deleted moving-picture show in the process. Only save restored pics back to the camera if y'all desire to keep them on the camera.
Save the resurrected file.
• Figure 41-12: Relieve the resurrected file.
15. Selection a location on your PC, requite the file a name, and click Save.
The file is reconstituted and put in the location you choose. You can verify that the picture is live and well by using Windows Explorer (as shown in Effigy 41-thirteen). Chances are good that you tin see the picture past using the camera's controls as well.

• Figure 41-13: The picture is alive and well.