You used Microsoft Research AutoCollage 2008 to create a beautiful set of collages, and now want those to shuffle in your desktop background every 30 minutes? That is made easy by the Windows 7 Slide Show desktop background. By default, AutoCollage will save collages to a single folder under the standard “My Pictures” folder. The instructions below assume you want to use the collages saved to this default location for your desktop background:

1.       Open the properties menu for the Windows 7 desktop and select the menu item Personalize. This will bring up the page “Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization”.

2.       Down on the page, click on the Desktop Background link. This will bring up the page “Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization\Desktop Background”.

3.       Click the Browse… button and on the “Browse For Folder” dialog expand the folder with your account name, and under it expand the “My Pictures” folder. You should then see the folder named “AutoCollage”. Select that folder and press OK.

4.       At this point you will have all the pictures in the AutoCollage folder selected to appear in the background slide show. You may remove some pictures from the slide show and also change other properties, like if the pictures will appear in the name sequence or shuffle, the picture position and the interval for picture changes. After setting the slide show properties press Save changes.

5.       Your selected AutoCollages are now part of the “Unsaved Theme”. Click on the Save Theme link under the “My Themes” section and name the theme.

The collages will now appear in a slide show in your desktop background. That is already great, but there is another Windows 7 feature that makes it easy to share a theme with family and friends. Once you create a theme, just bring up the properties menu –right-clicking over the theme on the theme list – and select the menu item Save theme for sharing. You will then be able to save the theme as a file with the extension .themepack. All you need to do afterwards is to send this single file to friends and family also using Windows 7. All that those receiving your .themepack file have to do is to double-click on it to have the theme added to their gallery, and set as their background slide show!

Microsoft Research attended the Photokina trade fair in Cologne, Germany at the end of September to present Microsoft Research AutoCollage 2008 to the public. A very successful week was had at the Microsoft booth, as more than 169,000 visitors passed through the doors in 6 days at one of the largest fairs dedicated to photography and imaging in the world.

AutoCollage attracted positive attention from all visitors, with many comments about the excellent and unique collages that the product can create. Strong interest in the use of this product was indicated by many of the attendees, with album cover collages and image set overviews being regular topics of conversation. Some visitors were already users of either the demo version or the full version of AutoCollage and their feedback about the usability and results of the product was not only good but also very useful to us as we consider the possibility of enhancements for any future versions.

Look out for coverage coming up on Channel 10 of AutoCollage and also some of the other Microsoft and Microsoft Research products that were shown at the trade fair.

For more information and to try AutoCollage free yourself for 30 days, please visit the official AutoCollage site