Scaling pictures instead of stretching

[curtisw2000]

I love the concept of the screensaver and think it has a lot of potential, however I do have a slight issue.  I want to include my own pictures in the screensaver.  The problem is though that they are (mostly) large pictures.  The current options of stretch and crop do not work well for them.  The stretch will distort the aspect ratio which bothers me (sorry personal pet-peeve) and the cropping only makes about a quarter of the pictures look fine.  So my question is: Is there a way to stretch the pictures while maintaining aspect ratio (commonly referred to as scaling) with the current options or possibly an update?

[mouser]

I believe I understand what you are asking for.
The closest you can choose right now is to tell it to preserve aspect ratio and shrink maximally, and set some borders on your monitors manually:



The first set of options tell the program not to do any stretching (you already found that), and to shrink the image until one of its dimensions fits completely on screen.

The second set of options manually puts a blank space border on the screen which has the indirect effect of causing less cropping (assuming the images are wider than they are tall).


What I understand you to be wanting is something that i should have implemented right away, which is to shrink images so that the entire image fits on screen in all cases (while preserving aspect ratio).  I generally prefer to crop because I don't like having varying amounts of blank space on screen which could happen if the option with this new mode, but it needs to be added.

I'm doing a bunch of updates to my programs I'll try to get this in the schedule of updates in the next few days. 

[mouser]

Try new beta download: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/mpq/downloads/beta/MultiPhotoQuotesSetup.exe

New options you should use:


Important: I know it's not the clearest thing, but what you want is to choose the combo of:

• Crop and preserve aspect mode
• Shrink maximally
• Fit entire image

The "Crop and preserve aspect mode" is what keeps the aspect ratio.
The shrink maximally option tells it to shrink as it needs (you could adjust this to set limits)
The new "Crop Goal" value of "Fit entire image" is the key new option, which says that the goal of the shrinking is to fit the LARGER dimension, which will end up with blank borders on the short dimension if set.

[mouser]

The best way to understand this new option is that if Crop Goal is "Fit small dimension", then you will tend to have images that fill the entire cell area, and aspect ratio is preserved, but where one dimension is cropped.  If Crop Goal is "Fit entire image" then the images will have some blank border around them in the cell so that entire image can be fit in cell area while preserving aspect ratio.

[curtisw2000]

That is so much better.  Thank you much.  I really kinda wish that it would use the space a little more efficiently but I can imagine that would be a royal pain to try to program.  It is great though...I probably will use it after a bit more tweaking...

[mouser]

well you can choose to tile your monitors differently to try to get the cell tiles to more closely match the aspect ratio of your images.

[Eisfux]

Hi...

First of all thanks for this great screensaver.
With "Fit entire image" im close to the perfect setting.

But there is one Problem left:

I have one monitor with a resolution of 1280x1024 an an other one with 1980x1080.
On the 4:3 Display "Fit entire image" does not work properly...
It seems that the Software ist thinking of a 16:9 as well...
Maybe because it thinks of a total resolution of 3200x1080 as shown on the "Advanced Custom Workspace Tilin"-Option...
I tried to solve the Problem with this option but it doesn´t work...
Is it possible to use two different scaled monitors?
And which setting do I have to use?

[mouser]

Tell me what it's doing that you don't like, and what you want it to do differently.

[Eisfux]

It´s not fitting the small ends of a 16:9-picture on the sides of the 4:3 screen.
And I want it to do this so I can see the full picture.
At the Moment there are no blank borders on top and bottom and the picture is too large.
My settings are 
  * Crop and preserve aspect mode
  * Shrink maximally
  * Fit entire image
as you mentioned.

[mouser]

ok so you are saying that it's showing the image but the left and right sides are cut off?
if so then that sounds like a bug, since the settings you have set mean nothing should get cut off.

[curtisw2000]

This is interesting, because I came here to report a similar problem.  Now that I've been using it a few days I'm noticing it is cropping some of the pictures on the left and right.  Similar to the way it used to before adding the "Crop Goal" option.  It does it on ~30%-50% of the pictures.  Most you'd never notice, but I notice it when I have a person near the edge of the picture will get part of their head cut off.  I haven't noticed it doing it to the top and bottoms at all.  It only seems to happen on pictures that are wider than tall (I do not know what the ratio is).  It will do it when it is a full-screen and when it is split into cells. It happens on both of the monitors also.

I have the same options set as the last post by Eisfux.  I am running 2 monitors of different ratios...not too sure if that matters or not. The main monitor is widescreen (1680x1050) and the other is standard (1280x1024).  They are also offset some, not directly lined up side by side.

I'm not too sure if any of this helps, and I know I provided excessive information (figured more was better than less). 

[Eisfux]

Yes, that's exactly the problem...
The software fits the image to the top and bottom, so pictures that are taller than wide are shown completely.
But it doesn´t fits the image to the left and right, so pictures that are wider than tall are cut of on the left and right sides.

Anyway, the software is just great.
Except for that it is working just fine even with two monitors...