Top 10 Best Screensaver Tools to Make Customized Screensavers
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Live Screensaver Creator
Make your very own customized screensavers using your personal photos or other images from your favorite movies, landscapes, hobbies or anything else you can find on the Internet.
Live Screensaver Creator is a software program designed specifically to help you generate live screensavers from websites or from images based on keywords.
Easily add keywords for images of interest
The interface seems to be a bit cluttered, yet it still presents an intuitive design which enables you to create screensavers with just a few clicks, regardless of your previous experience in the world of IT.
As mentioned above, it is possible to generate screensaver from images according to keywords. It is important to understand that the tool will not scan your computer the hard drive for these, but rather a selected website, the choices being Bing, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, PhotoBucket and SmugMug. When creating screensavers from websites, you are just required to add all the URLs that interest you.
Edit images and interaction properties
Whichever type you choose you should know you can shuffle the images, change their display interval and establish the exit condition from a drop-down menu (e.g. keyboard button, mouse move, mouse button etc.).
Projects can be tested at any point, so that you get a better picture of how your configurations might look, while it is also possible to save them to the hard drive in a LSC format, as well as an EXE one.
Regardless of the actions you are taking, the system’s resources will not be hampered by this utility, as the CPU and memory usage will remain low.
A few last words
In conclusion, Live Screensaver Creator is a useful piece of software and a good choice when it comes to generating screensavers. It has a high quality output, a good response time, user-friendly environment, and enough options to tinker with.
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Ultra Screen Saver Maker
A user-friendly tool that enables you to design screensavers by merging images, audio files, movies, Flash items, URLs, text messages, and transition effects.
Ultra Screen Saver Maker is a straightforward piece of software designed to help users create screensavers.
Although it comes bundled with several dedicated parameters, it boasts a clean and intuitive layout that allows you to configure the dedicated parameters in only a few steps.
Various configurable parameters
Ultra Screen Saver Maker gives you the possibility to provide general information about the screensaver, such as name and short description, assign an action to be triggered when you exit the tool (e.g. keyboard or mouse button), as well as show or hide the mouse cursor.
What’s more, you can insert a footer and customize it in terms of font, font style, size, and color, upload multiple images (JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TGA, TIF) by simply dragging and dropping them into the workspace or using the built-in browse function, and preview the photos.
Audio support
The program lets you specify the time delay, pick the effect and animated GIF file duration, select the image size, opt for a random photo position on the screen, make the utility shuffle the images, and choose a background picture by uploading a photo or using a color.
Other notable characteristics bundled into this tool enable you to insert transition effects (e.g. clock, bars, squares, stars), add audio files (WAV, MID, MP3), shuffle the songs, upload clips and Flash animations (SWF, AVI, MPG, WMV), attach URLs, as well as embed text messages, which can be imported from plain text files.
Vast transition library
The application comprises several customization tools designed to give you a hand when it comes to changing the transition delay for audio and video files, text messages, and Flash items, as well as tweaking their size and position. Plus, you are allowed to preview the screensaver, and export it to EXE, ZIP, or SCR file format.
Handy screensaver creation tool
All in all, Ultra Screen Saver Maker provides a decent pack of features for helping users create screensavers by merging images, audio files, movies, Flash items, and text messages. Its intuitive layout makes it ideal for beginners and professionals alike.
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Screensaver Factory Enterprise
Combine stunning pictures with videos and music while adding various effects and transitions to create a screensaver for business or leisure.
Screensavers can be used for more purposes than simply keeping your screen pretty while you're away from desktop. Luckily, with the help of specialized applications such as Screensaver Factory Enterprise you can combine various multimedia files into a set o visually appealing effects to display a message or trigger when your computer is idle.
Get a quick result with a wizard
One of the main advantages of the application is that it can be used by beginners and experts alike, thanks to an implemented wizard that provides the result simply by following a few steps. You start off by choosing the type which can be either picture based, company logo, SWF file or video. Depending on your selection, you then need to provide necessary files, as well as playback options and even distribution method.
Combine videos, images and music
In case you want to take on a more professional approach, you can spend some time and fine-tune each aspect. When creating a new project you can populate it with videos, pictures and music files of some of the most popular formats, as well as GIF or Flash animations.
Various customization options
The application lets you equip the screensaver with a background image to be displayed between transition effects, with the possibility to use gradient fills, or a random background for each new media element that appears on the screen.
Furthermore, you can take advantage of a large variety of visuals and transition effects, which you can even customize or create new ones from scratch like sparkling or glittering. Other elements range from floating text to custom clocks and calendars.
Suitable for both leisure and business
Depending on your intentions, the application gives you the possibility to set promotional details and even selling conditions in case your product is to be used for commercial purposes. In this regard you can also include general information like author and copyright details, readme text, as well as the license agreement.
To sum it up
All in all, Screensaver Factory Enterprise is a powerful tool for creating what the name suggests, with purpose targeted at both leisure and business. Beginners and experts alike can take advantage of its features due to the intuitive design and overall is definitely worth more than a try, the result being far from a disappointment.
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Screensaver Factory Standard
Easy-to-use tool which enables you to create picture, video or Flash screensavers, install them on the PC or generate self-installing files.
Screensaver Factory Standard is a software application which was developed specifically to aid you create your own screensavers, with many configurable settings.
The installation process is a piece of cake, and after you wrap it up, you are met with a simple and modern-looking interface, which is accessible to all user categories. In fact, beginners can take advantage of a wizard, which will guide them through the entire process.
This program supports many file types, including images (Gif, JPG, BMP, TIF, PNG), videos (AVI, MPG, WMV, ASF, MOV), songs (MID, MP3, WMA, WAV) and Flash (SWF).
Regardless of the type of screensaver you want to create, you should know it is possible to make the picture fit or fill the screen, stretch or do not resize it. Aside from that, you can edit the background, by using gradient fills (and choose style) or random colors, picking them or importing a photo.
You can add a few visual items, which are provided by the developers, as well as input title, author, copyright message, icon image and project notes, as well as preview an image, and include a readme text and a license agreement. Transition effects and picture adjustments can be applied, while it is also possible to set up exit conditions.
Your projects can be saved to the hard disk as a SCR format, or you can create a setup package for it (EXE) and burn it to a CD or DVD. The results are of good quality, the process does not burden the computer’s performance and the response time is excellent.
In conclusion, Screensaver Factory Standard proves to be a handy piece of software, with a user-friendly interface and sufficient options to keep you occupied for a while. The professional and enterprise versions come bundled with even more settings, so you might want to give them a try.
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iScreensaver
Simple tool which enables you to create screensavers for both Mac and Windows operating systems, preview your projects and lock them.
iScreensaver is a software tool that can be used in order to help individuals design their own screensavers, password-protect them and save them to the hard drive in one of the different formats supported.
Simple interface
The installation process does not last long, as it does not bring any kind of surprises, while the interface you are met with presents quite a simple and well organized design. The main window is comprised of a menu bar, a few buttons and a panel to display all previously created screensavers. It is accessible to all users, from beginners to highly experienced people.
Supported formats and some of the options incorporated
This software utility supports import from a long list of file extensions, such as JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, BMP, PSD, TGA, AVI, MPG, 3GP, M4V, MP4, MOV, SWF, PIC, AIFF, MP3, WAV, AAC, 3GP and QTL. These items can be uploaded with the help of a file browser, as well as the “drag and drop” function.
Aside from that, it is possible to lock your projects, provide a list of keys or generate new keys based on a user name and customize the unlocking reminder dialog. You can create a screensaver control panel, and input a title and info, upload a picture, and link your website.
Help contents are provided and they happen to be quite comprehensive and well-organized. CPU and memory usage is minimal, and thus the computer’s performance is not going to be hampered.
Conclusion
To sum up, iScreensaver proves to be quite an efficient piece of software for people interested in creating screensavers for both Mac and Windows operating systems. The response time is good, the resulted items are of good quality and the interface is accessible to all users.
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Animated Screensaver Maker
Design your own screensavers by applying animations and other image effects on your personal images using this software application.
Animated Screensaver Maker is a software with a pretty self-explanatory title - it allows you to easily create animated screensavers.
The interface of the program is clean and intuitive. Users of any level of experience can easily navigate through Animated Screensaver Maker's features.
So, you can get started by inserting an image (JPEG, BMP, PNG or TGA) that will be used as background.
But you can also apply effects (e.g. underwater, water mirror, fire) and change their properties (e.g. slope, size and speed of the waves, number of drops).
In addition, you can import moving objects (e.g. rain, fog, downpour), stationary items (e.g. flower, clock, electric discharge) and animation brushes (e.g. water, drift, gold stars).
Furthermore, you can add a soundtrack by creating a playlist, modify slideshow timing settings (e.g. fade in and out time), open example projects and preview the screensaver before creating it.
Animated Screensaver Maker takes up a moderate amount of system resources, can guide you to a comprehensive online help page with snapshots and video tutorials, and didn't freeze, crash or pop up errors during our tests.
We would have liked to see a wide range of effects, animated and stationary objects but, even so, we strongly recommend Animated Screensaver Maker to all users, since it comes packed with some attractive elements for creating screensavers.
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Download Hubs
Animated Screensaver Maker is part of these download collections: Create Screensavers, Screensaver Makers
gPhotoShow Free
A simple-to-use program that helps you create screensavers using the images stored in your computer, embed transitions, and add background music.
gPhotoShow Free is a lightweight software program built specifically for helping users create screensavers from their favorite image files.
Once you have installed the application, this tool becomes accessible from the Windows screensaver menu, thus allowing you to set it as the default screensaver and change various settings. The user interface is really simple and offers several dedicated parameters to tinker with.
gPhotoShow Free gives you the possibility to add multiple folders which contain images, set the delay time between photos, and specify the transition speed.
What’s more, you can make the utility display images randomly, embed transitions, enlarge small pictures to fit the screen size, and show or hide file information, such as filename, date, creation date, and others.
Other notable characteristics worth mentioning are represented by the possibility to change the text and background color, exit the screen saver on a mouse click or movement, or when a key is pressed, pause or restart the slideshow, and go back to the previous image.
Last but not least, you are allowed to set the last photo as your wallpaper, insert background music (e.g. MIDI, WAV, MP3, WMA), and make the utility play songs randomly.
During our testing we have noticed that gPhotoShow Free provides good photo quality and without errors throughout the entire process. It doesn’t eat up a lot of CPU and memory, so the overall performance of the computer is not hampered.
To sum things up, gPhotoShow Free offers a simple software solution for animating your desktop activity. It can be installed and configured by all types of users, regardless of their computer skills. If you are looking for advanced functions, you can check out the professional version of the app, which lets you insert panoramic images, videos and animations, as well as websites and 360 degrees panoramas, and install plugins.
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Screen Saver Construction Set
Enables you to easily distributable multimedia screen savers from your pictures, sounds and text files with this useful application.
Screensavers can be useful, not just functional tools for a computer, but useful marketing, display and promoting tools. Screensavers can also be a source of revenue for some people and many applications are available that allow people to create and sell their own screensavers. Screen Saver Construction Set is an application that specializes in allowing users to create multimedia screensavers for distribution.
A cumbersome and awkward interface that does not respond naturally to users
Screen Saver Construction Set’s interface is difficult to use, the icons and available options make it difficult to get the application to respond how users might wish. Creating a screensaver is an obtuse and awkward process with some menus hidden that are difficult to access. To adjust the properties of a page, users must first open the screensaver in its editable mode, then right click. A more straightforward approach to several of the menus would greatly improve the interface.
Creating a complex screensaver seems to rely more on using existing files, the application doesn’t include a way to animate them, users must have an animation file in place. Getting the screensavers to move from page to the other is also clumsy and unclear. It seems that in an effort to streamline and make the interface efficient, important options and settings have been hidden, or put in unintuitive places that impede users.
A varied selection of tools and features, but they feel more focused on distribution rather than creation
The application does have some useful options and tools at its disposal that might aid users, the ability to create custom installer scripts and good format support are some of them. However, most of Screen Saver Construction Set’s features seemed to be more aimed at making the screensavers easy to distribute, something it does easily. The application seems to have forgotten though that before you can distribute, users have to make something worth distributing.
Apart from being able to load images of various formats, with audio support, as well as a few already made animations, the application is dangerously low on editing tools. There are no interesting affects, no special features or no filters to add. The limited ability of the program means that any screensavers produced by the application are going to be basic or simplistic in nature.
An interesting application that is held back by various design and support issues
Unfortunately, while the application shows promise, it features an awkward design that impedes it. The choice to use an irregular screensaver creation tool means that most users will feel lost and powerless when using the application, combined with mediocre screensavers. All in all, Screen Saver Creation Set is well intentioned application, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
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Screensaver Factory Professional
Create personal or shareware screensavers for distribution, following simple wizards step-by-step, and save the output as an EXE or a SCR file.
Screensaver Factory Professional is a software application that creates screensavers through some easy-to-use wizards. It can be handled by both beginners and experienced individuals.
The interface of the program is clean and intuitive. In order to create picture screensavers, you may import items via the file browser or folder view ('drag and drop' is not supported).
Screensaver Factory Professional supports GIF, JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIF and BMP. It can display a photo for a user-defined number of seconds, as well as automatically resize very large pictures.
But you can also create video screensavers from AVI, MPG, MPEG, WMV and ASF items, Flash screensavers from SWF files, and company logo screensavers from the aforementioned image types.
In addition, you can insert music and some preset animations (e.g. snow, bubbles, glitter, fade), clocks (e.g. wall clock, metallic, elegant), calendars (e.g. colorful, exotic, steel frame) and RSS news. The latter option works only with picture screensavers. All these features include customization settings, such as the background, position, font and spacing for the RSS news.
Screensaver information may be added as well; this focuses on the title, author and copyright, author's website, preview image, icon, Readme text, license agreement and project notes. Plus, you can include promotional features (e.g. web promotion, exit banner, settings window banner, image logo) and prepare the screensaver for commercial distribution (registration, nag-screen, nag-banner, limitations). The project can be previewed before built.
Screensaver Factory Professional supports multiple languages for the UI, has a good response time and includes user documentation. We have not come across any issues during our testing; the app did not freeze, crash or pop up error dialogs. All in all, Screensaver Factory Professional provides some excellent tools for creating multipurpose screensavers.
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JPEG Saver
Accessible, easy-to-use and handy software application that manages to display the contents of your images folders as a screensaver.
JPEG Saver is a simple-to-use software application that enables you to create a screensaver from directories with containing images. It comes packed with several useful options that can be easily adjusted by all user levels.
Automatically selected as the default screensaver
Once installed, the app is automatically applied as the default screensaver. As far as settings are concerned, you can get started by pointing out one or multiple locations whose picture files you want to take into account. Supported image types include JPEG, PNG, JPC, BMP and JP2. It is possible to include subdirectories as well as to use filters.
When it comes to image options, you can set the on-screen position, automatic rotation, screen display mode and new size, enable color management, tweak gamma and dimming, apply and select transitions, insert delay times, and so on.
Customize background, add clock, text, and more
In addition to that, the background mode can be set (e.g. fit to screen, noise, image copy) and it is possible to keep the aspect ratio and adjust the alpha level. Styles may be added and edited in terms of font, border, text and border color, along with various types of information such as clock, process and version details.
The simple-to-use software application runs on a very low amount of CPU and RAM, so it does not affect the overall performance of the computer. It worked well throughout our evaluation, without freezing, crashing or popping up error dialogs. We have not come across any kind of issues throughout our tests.
In conclusion
All in all, JPEG Saver delivers a simple solution to turning entire folders with images into screensaver animations. It bundles together a variety of customization options which make it a bit more than your average screensaver, allowing you to build exactly what you want the screen to show in idle time.
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