A very cool screen saver for folks with a lot of photos stored on their Macs.
One of the very cool and almost hidden features of Mac OS X 10.5’s improved screen saver is the photo mosaic screen saver module. This screen saver tells your computer to use all of the photos stored on it to create mosaic images of photos stored in a specific folder or an iPhoto event or album.
If that description doesn’t really help you visualize what this screen saver is doing, this post includes a video that not only shows you how to set it up, but it shows you the screen saver in action.
Keep in mind that the mosaic screen saver works best if you have a lot of photos in your iPhoto file.
Setting It Up
Here are the step-by-step instructions for setting up this screen saver on your Mac. These instructions are repeated in the video, but you might want to read through them quickly to get an idea of what to expect.
- Choose Apple > System Preferences.
- In the System Preferences window that appears, click the Desktop & Screen Saver Icon.
- In the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences pane, click the Screen Saver button.
- In the Screen Savers list on the left side of the window, scroll down to the Pictures list and select one of the picture folders, iPhoto events, or iPhoto albums in the list. This will be the folder full of images that are created with the mosaic tiles.
- Under the Preview area, click the Mosaic Display Style button.
Click the Options button and use the dialog sheet that appears to set options, including whether slides should be presented in a random order, how many rows of mosaic tiles should make up the image, and the speed at which the mosaic image should be built. Click OK to save your settings.- Set screen saver Start options as desired, using the slider in the main Screen Saver window.
- To see what your screen saver will look like on a full screen, click Test. (You can press Esc when you’re finished previewing.
- Click the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences window to save your settings.
Seeing It In Action
Okay, here’s my home movie of the setup process, as well as a full-screen test with a number of images. To keep the video small, I downsized my computer display’s resolution. You’ll need QuickTime installed on your computer to see this video.
Two quick notes about this video:
- To make the file size smaller, I’ve set the screen rate a bit low for this. As a result, the screen saver’s transition appear a bit jerky. When you use the screen saver, you’ll see that the transitions are actually quite smooth.
- This is a 17 MB file. The quickTime controller may not appear immediately after you click, especially if you have a slow connection to the Internet.
[Note: I removed the full-size video I'd linked to here in addition to showing the movie above. It was choking at least one offline RSS reader with its 72+ MB size.]
Page References
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:
- Screen Saver, pages 166-169
- Using System Preferences Panes, pages 547-549
- Preview, pages 304-308
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20 responses so far ↓
1 Mike // Dec 13, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Nicer than my video demo — but I used music! :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2isa0KieiU
2 Maria Langer // Dec 13, 2007 at 12:38 pm
It actually looks kind of cool with music, too.
3 Peanut // Dec 13, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Here’s a tip: You may not want EVERY picture in your libraries (it uses Aperture, too) to show up in the mosaic. For those pictures that you want to exclude, add the “private” keyword in iPhoto or Aperture (you’ll need to create one if you haven’t already).
4 Maria Langer // Dec 13, 2007 at 3:10 pm
That’s a great tip. Thanks for sharing it.
Now I’m wondering what kinds of photos you have on your hard disk….
5 Curmudgeon Geographer // Dec 13, 2007 at 9:49 pm
If you view this post in Mail’s new RSS reader, the movie comes along as an attachment, which Mail goes ahead and begins downloading in whole and locks up with a spinning colorwheel until the entire “attachment” is downloaded or I get fed up and force quit Mail.
Not sure if this is specific to particular RSS feeds but it sure is a PITA. I was hoping to use Mail’s RSS reader but I have far too often come across embedded land mine “attachments” in RSS posts that I just plain have to go back to Safari’s reader.
Just wanted to give you an FYI on this behavior. I had no idea there was a massive attached file in the RSS post until I clicked on the post and Mail promptly locked up. :(
6 Maria Langer // Dec 14, 2007 at 5:50 am
Sorry about this. I assume you mean the very big attachment I linked to? I linked to it to avoid problems like that. But you know, I think it might happen in any offline RSS reader. I’ll remove the attachment now so it doesn’t bother anyone else. Thanks very much for pointing this out.
7 Lim // Dec 14, 2007 at 7:05 am
Hi,
Excellent video, may I know how did you create your video? It’s very professional especially the audio, it’s very clear. Thanks.
8 Diana // Dec 14, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Is there an app for Mac which replicates this Mosaic function? My husband would like to include such an effect sequence in a TV commercial for a client in our town. He’s editing in Final Cut Pro.
By the way, Maria, we’re big fans. We rely on your Mac OS books. Now I see your Leopard version is out, it’s on our shopping list!
9 Partners in Grime // Dec 15, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Mosaic Screen Saver is pretty cool. I like the Screen Saver that tosses the photos on the desktop.
10 Maria Langer // Dec 16, 2007 at 8:59 am
Lim, I used IShowYou, an excellent screen recording app.
Diana, sorry, but I don’t know of any. I would be a neat effect in a video, though. And thanks for your kind words about my books!
Partners, which Screen Saver are you referring to? And do you mean the desktop (as in under all the windows) or just the screen itself?
11 Edwinabackinbowl // Dec 16, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Maria - My friends were so impressed with the mosaic screensaver, which I happily found by accident. Are there any programs you know of that would create a mosaic like this to?
12 Edwinabackinbowl // Dec 16, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Sorry - hit enter to fast.
Any programs that would print the mosaic?
13 Maria Langer // Dec 16, 2007 at 3:30 pm
No, I don’t know of any programs that will do what the mosaic screen saver does or print the mosaic. But I’m sure there must be something out there. Why not try http://www.macupdate.com/ and do a search there? Good luck!
14 Andy Piper // Dec 19, 2007 at 9:03 am
I was using this for a while, but I’m not a big iPhoto user. I use an RSS feed / photocast of my Flickr photos in iPhoto, but the images in it don’t seem to be used by the Mosaic screensaver…. hmm… OK I’m not phrasing this well.
I have a photocast from Flickr in iPhoto. I use this as the album for the Mosaic screensaver.
The screensaver will use the images for the large / main image, but the individual pictures that are used to make the main one are drawn from only my local iPhoto albums - and since I barely use iPhoto, that’s a small(ish) pool.
Not your fault, of course, Maria, but just an observation. It’s still a really really cool screensaver, but I’m using the Collage style by preference with my Flickr photocast, it’s just a better fit.
Andy Piper’s last blog post..Year Two
15 Maria Langer // Dec 19, 2007 at 10:01 am
The mosaic screen saver definitely works best if you have a LOT of photos on your hard disk. I have more than 2,000 so I see a lot of variety.
Although I think the mosaic screen saver is way cool, I don’ t usually use it. I’m a plain Jane kind of person and stick to a slide show from one of my iPhoto event folders.
Let’s face it: a screen saver usually goes into action when you’re not using your computer — possibly not even in the same room. So those pictures are likely to be displaying themselves to an empty room.
16 Don Pratt // Dec 19, 2007 at 10:19 pm
This isn’t working right for me. I dumped a whole bunch of jpeg files to my pictures folder and set up the mosaic picture screen saver. It selects any picture to make the big picture (like it should), but it insists on using only TWO images to construct the mosaic - YUCK!
I have no idea why this is happening. As far as I know, there’s nothing different about the two images it uses to construct the mosaic, except that some days earlier I’d placed those two images into my pictures folder and done a quickie test of the mosaic screen saver using those two images. Now the screen saver seems to treat these two images as “special” and ignores the others.
17 Don Pratt // Dec 19, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Sorry, I figured it out. I totally missed the iPhoto Library part, and thought I could just dump a bunch of photos to a folder. You’ll have to be patient with me. I’m still making the transition from Windoze. :-)
18 Hasan // Feb 19, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I wanted to use this mosaic screensaver for a specific folder, but it chooses pictures outside of that folder. I was wondering if there are any solutions to this problem.
19 Maria Langer // Feb 19, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hasan, this feature only works if iPhoto is installed. It then uses the iPhoto images as the mosaics to make up the images in the folder you select.
Hope this helps!
20 Garvio // Mar 5, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I’ve been using the Mosaic screen saver ever since I upgraded to Leopard. It has been working flawlessly. Yesterday, I finally received my Nvidia Geforce 8800GT graphics card for my Mac Pro. I installed the card without any problems and everything works fine except for the mosaic screensaver. As the image zooms out to create the next image, the screen flashes white, just as it is about to dissolve to the image it is creating. Could this be a problem with the Nvidia card or is there something else that may a been corrupted. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas.
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