I'm thinking of designing a screensaver CD to sell at my art shows/website. Anyone had any experience with these programs with either good or not so good results?
Posted by Jesse Speer on March 5, 2009 at 10:46 PM
Hello Rob. I currently use iScreensaver Designer. It produces savers for both Mac and PC - and is certainly the most robust solution. I haven't hadn't one problem with it, and it's very customizable. Very worthwhile software, if you sell savers.
I previously used Axialis, which I also enjoyed using (but it didn't offer a Mac solution).
Posted by Linnet Long on March 9, 2009 at 12:09 AM
Rob,
I use Screensaver Factory Pro. Hmmm...in reference to Jesse's post, I haven't really thought of whether its output is compatible with PC and MAC both. Anyway, it has good "shareware" options.
Jesse's success with Axialis led me in that direction, too, and I find the program to be very fun and easy. However, if you're offering screensavers for retail sale, it matters quite a bit that Axialis only does PC-compatible screensavers, so I'd go with one that does both PC and those hippie computers all those artsy-fartsy guys are using (Mac). Jesse knows of what he speaks, so I'd go with his recommendation.
Jesse,
I've narrowed my search to iscreensaver Designer and Screen Saver Studio, SSS does not support the Mac platform so this is an instant drawback. I am testing both programs and neither one is very clear on the best file size to upload my JPEG images for the best results on most monitors. They just tell me use whatever size produces the best image/size trade off. I thought maybe as a user of iscreensaver you could shed some light on this.
Thanks!!
Posted by Jesse Speer on March 16, 2009 at 7:59 PM
Rob,
Yeah, they really don't tell you how to size your photos. It's been more than a few years since i did my size tests, without taking notes unfortunately. But I must have made 10 different savers at various settings, at least. What I can tell you is that I went with 1024 x 768. It was nice balance between image quality and size of the download/installer file - for the average computer system. (My savers are download only. Even if you're making an installer file for CD, you'll want to keep the image files fairly small ... so the saver doesn't devour system resources.) I am importing pre-sized TIF files. I use a setting of "7" (High) for JPEG compression.
That said, screens are getting bigger and bigger. I will likely use something around 1200 for my next saver.
Discussion
5 repliesI previously used Axialis, which I also enjoyed using (but it didn't offer a Mac solution).
http://www.axialis.com/
http://iscreensaver.com/
I use Screensaver Factory Pro. Hmmm...in reference to Jesse's post, I haven't really thought of whether its output is compatible with PC and MAC both. Anyway, it has good "shareware" options.
http://www.blumentals.net/scrfactory/
Linnet
I've narrowed my search to iscreensaver Designer and Screen Saver Studio, SSS does not support the Mac platform so this is an instant drawback. I am testing both programs and neither one is very clear on the best file size to upload my JPEG images for the best results on most monitors. They just tell me use whatever size produces the best image/size trade off. I thought maybe as a user of iscreensaver you could shed some light on this.
Thanks!!
Yeah, they really don't tell you how to size your photos. It's been more than a few years since i did my size tests, without taking notes unfortunately. But I must have made 10 different savers at various settings, at least. What I can tell you is that I went with 1024 x 768. It was nice balance between image quality and size of the download/installer file - for the average computer system. (My savers are download only. Even if you're making an installer file for CD, you'll want to keep the image files fairly small ... so the saver doesn't devour system resources.) I am importing pre-sized TIF files. I use a setting of "7" (High) for JPEG compression.
That said, screens are getting bigger and bigger. I will likely use something around 1200 for my next saver.
Rob, if you want to see my saver, just email me.