Wallpaper Manager

One of my biggest complaints about most wallpaper managers is a lack of a functional full-screen mode. IrfanView can open a picture full-screen or you can make one full-screen from a window (double-click the image). You can see the next and last images with the space bar and backspace key. You can go through an entire folder in this manner, seeing what a wallpaper really will look like before selecting an image.

Once you have found the new wallpaper you want, there are several key combinations to set the image in place. To center an image, use crtl+shift+c. To tile an image, use ctrl+shift+t. To stretch (and possibly skew) an image, use ctrl+shift+s. To stretch (without skewing) an image, use ctrl+shift+x. The last shortcut as added in the most recent version of IrfanView, so be sure to update the program.

To create a shortcut to open an image full-screen, you will need a few things. You have to specify the path for IrfanView, your image, and the /fs switch. The “fs” stands for full-screen. It should look like this:

i_view32.exe D:\Wallpaper\Image.jpg /fs

Tip: Start with a shortcut of IrfanView. Right click the shortcut, select “Properties,” and add parameters after the program path. This ensures you have the correct path to the application.

Randomize Wallpaper

A shortcut can be created that can randomize your wallpaper from a file selected within a folder or list. Place it in your “Start Up” folder to have a new wallpaper every time you boot your computer. Place it in your “Scheduled Tasks” to have it change in any intervals you want. You can always put it in the Start Menu (or even on the desktop) for convenient access.

To create a shortcut to change your wallpaper, you need to specify the path to IrfanView, the folder with the images, and the image types. After that, use the parameters shown:

i_view32.exe D:\Wallpaper\*.jpg /random /wall=0 /killmesoftly

Screenshot Maker

IrfanView has a great screen capture tool. Just press “C” to use it. It will bring up a dialog box that lets you grab the whole screen, just one program, or an area/box you draw with your mouse. Other settings can be found here, such as the file name pattern and directory (such as one in a network share or Dropbox). You can then use a key combination to activate the capture or set an automatic, repeating timer.

You can create shortcuts to use the screen capture features directly. There are a lot of options in the help file. More than likely, one of these two is the one you would want to use.

Capture the foreground window:

i_view32.exe /capture=2

Capture a rectangle selection:

i_view32.exe /capture=4

Basic Image Editing

While IrfanView is mainly a viewing tool, it does have image editing features. It will not replace powerful tools like PhotoShop or GIMP, but it will complement them. Fast load times, precision selections, and bag of tricks make it more useful than you might expect. You can resize, crop, and convert image types with ease. Enhancing an image or making it black and white is done with one click of a menu item. Adjusting the brightness/contrast, and tweaking the hue are all can be performed through intuitive dialog boxes. You can even blur, sharpen, use other filters (e.g. oil painting). All of these things are right in the Image menu.

Summary

IrfanView is a versatile tool. If you are just using it to view images, then you are not using its full potential. As you can imagine, taking screenshots is something a writer here has to do often. Being able to do it quickly, and right the first time, makes the work easier. Have some other clever uses for IrfanVIew? Let us know in the comments.

Display Fusion can be downloaded as a free version from the developer’s website with limited functionality. The pro version of Display Fusion can be ordered as well on the same website. The version comparison between Display Fusion and Display Fusion Pro list the features that are only available in the Pro version including wallpaper rotation, custom hotkeys or the fine tuning of the background image position.

The main feature of Display Fusion is to display wallpapers on multiple desktops. The user may display different wallpapers on each desktop or use one wallpaper that spans across all of them. Each computer monitor connected to the computer system is displayed in Display Fusion’s main interface.

The user can load wallpapers from his computer or Flickr and make them the default wallpaper for the computer monitor. Display Fusion Pro provides access to background image positioning which can be used to fine tune the location of the wallpaper on the monitor. It’s also possible to use one of the seven display modes that range from stretching the image to fitting the width or height while maintaining the aspect ratio of the image.

Users of Display Fusion Pro can enable wallpaper rotation in the same interface. They can either add a list of wallpapers from their computer or get their wallpapers directly from Flickr.

Images can be grabbed from Flickr users, groups or by searching for text. The wallpapers set will then be used to rotate the computer’s wallpaper in a time interval specified by the user. One interesting option is to freeze a wallpaper. This will stop the process of rotating wallpapers and make the current one the default wallpaper.

Display Fusion comes with window management features as well which have been specifically designed for multi-monitor systems. Windows can be easily moved between computer monitors including maximized windows. It is furthermore possible to position windows on the same computer monitor. It is for instance possible to center a window on the current monitor or to snap it to one of the monitor’s edges.

One main benefit of Display Fusion Pro is the ability to configure custom window sizing and moving hotkeys. Other interesting features include Window Snapping with the option to exclude applications from it or maximized window dragging between computer monitors.

The newest Beta of Display Fusion Pro enabled another long requested feature to the application. Users can enable a taskbar on every computer monitor. The feature is still beta but it already provides two possibilities for users. The first is to display a Display Fusion Taskbar on additional monitors that is showing all windows like the taskbar on the main computer monitor. The second option is to only display the windows that are open on each monitor.

Jon Tackabury is regularly updating his website Binary Fortress with new information about Display Fusion and other software projects.

Five licenses for Display Fusion Pro are up for grabs. Just reply in the comments and let us know that you want one.

It was designed primarily with webcams in mind but it is basically possible to enter any url that points to an image in the application. Alternatively images from the hard drive and the current wallpaper image can be added to the list of possible wallpapers. There is unfortunately no preview of the images available which means that the best way of checking if an image link is valid is to check it in a web browser.

The wallpaper manager provides two options to change wallpapers automatically. It is possible to change them at system startup or every x minutes where x is a number between 3 and 30. Web wallpaper is a Java application which does have consequences.

The application is only compatible to Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Vista although currently but the chance of porting it to other operating systems is there. The negative aspect on the other hand is that it uses roughly 38 Megabytes of computer memory and about the same amount of virtual memory while running in minimized state which is a lot.

Cleaning the memory brought the computer memory usage down to 1.5 Megabytes which quickly rose to about 13 Megabytes but stayed consistent on that level.

Dream Wallpaper is a Windows Wallpapers application which provides access to wallpapers in several categories including nature, games & movies and cartoon. It ships with a few wallpapers that are installed with the application itself and provides an easy to use interface to browse those local but also network wallpapers.

Network Wallpapers referring obviously to the wallpapers on their website which according to them contains more than 80K wallpapers. Dream Wallpaper uses two tabs to distinguish between widescreen and normal wallpapers. Each tab contains a column on the left hand that links to local and network wallpapers in various categories.

The local wallpapers are accessible right away, a click on a network wallpaper category loads a preview of six wallpapers from the Dream Wallpaper website. The maximum that can be pulled this way is 54 wallpapers in each category which seems a bit unfortunate but is probably part of the greater plan to bring more traffic to their website.

The Windows wallpapers application has a quirk besides that. There is no information about the supported resolution next to the wallpapers which means that it is possible to end up with a wallpaper that gets stretched or otherwise mangled on the computer desktop.

There is also no direct way to include already stored wallpapers in the application. The only possible solution would be to move the wallpapers into the program folder. This requires however the creation of a thumbnail for the same wallpaper. A far better solution would be to pick the wallpapers that you like from the application and copy them to your local wallpaper folder.

The website is clearly structured and good to navigate. It does contain advertisement but not enough to avoid it. It uses a better structure as well, wallpapers can be sorted by screen resolution or theme. The good thing about this is that Linux and Macintosh users can simply visit the website and download the wallpapers they want which Windows users obviously could as well.

The application would make more sense if it would provide additional options and some comfort in adding local wallpapers that have existed on the system prior to installing the software.

Wallpapers are divided into categories like Games, Graphic Design and Photography which can be checked separately. If you only want graphic design wallpapers you leave that category checked and uncheck all other categories.

The bad side of this approach is the limited choice. Wallpapers will only be chosen from the available ones giving the user no control in this matter. It would be nicer if the program would provide a custom category that would allow the user to add his own wallpapers to the program.

Some wallpapers contain information about the artist which some users might not like that much. The Windows version of Desktopia is currently in Beta and requires the .net Framework 3.5 to run. It provides a few additional settings like the interval that the wallpapers should be changed and a buttons to update the application and images.

I personally prefer more control when it comes to wallpapers on my desktop. There is unfortunately no way to download the wallpapers directly from the Desktopia website.