How to Make a Screensaver With Picasa

Using the Picasa application for visual presentations.

Picasa is free image software that provides the tools necessary to create a screensaver from your own images of your kids, family and friends. The Picasa application is quite easy to use, and in a matter of minutes you have the ability to create a unique and original screensaver without needing technical or photo-editing skills.

Things You'll Need

• Picasa version 3.8.0

Instructions

1. Open Picasa. Click "All Programs," and click "Picasa 3."

2. Select the image or images that you would like as the screensaver. There are three options when selecting your images for the screensaver. To select a single image, click once; to select more than one image, hold down the "Control " key; and to select all images stored in the same folder, press "Control" and "A" simultaneously.

3. Create and add the image or images that you selected for the screensaver. Click "Create," and click "Add to Screensaver."

4. Configure the screensaver settings. Once you have added your image or images to the screensaver, the screensaver setting panel will automatically launch. On the "Screen Saver" tab, the Google Screensaver automatically sets the "Wait" time in minutes before the screensaver will activate. Click the "Settings" button to launch the Google Photos Screensaver configurations dialog.

   On the Google Photos Screensaver dialog, select the "Visual Effect" of how the image or images will appear and close, the time lapse in seconds of when the image will change, an option to show or not show the caption and which album the images will be displayed from--select "Picasa," click "Configure," click "OK" and click "OK."

References

• "Don't Spend a Dime: The Path to Low-cost Computing"; James Floyd Kelly; 2009