Photostand application lets you change the wallpaper of your PC automatically, like Digital Photoframes.
Photostand collects many different kinds of Web wallpapers on the Internet Web Wallpaper servers and enables you to set those images at your PC's desktop. Photostand recommends more than 40 thousands pictures from the Wallpaper servers' detabases.

This is a free / open source application.
It changes wallpapers at each interval with a specified displaying style. Users can be choose a interval and a style from the predefined value in the menu.

Pictures are selected from the folders list randomly or sequencially. The list can contain any folders on the local computer as well as shared disks.

It also support the internet web wallpapers. Specifying some keywords for pictures, and the server selects picture's URLs from the database and sends one to the application. Then the application set it as the wallpaper automaticlly.

The details of the service is described in the page "Internet web wallpaper", samples of the picture database stored in the server is displayed in "Sample thumbnails of the web wallpaper."

Linux (UNIX) version of the application is found on Photostand (Linux Version).

Basically photostand automatically starts with PC starting up / changes wallpapers / stops at shutdown.
So you may keep running if you don't want to change setting, after initial settings at the first running time.

It runs as a background process at the starting up, and a small icon of a child is displayed on the icon box located on the right side of the Windows menu bar. If you need to configure how it running, please doube click or "open" of right click menu of the icon and the main window is displayed on the screen. It will be doing the same if you double-clicking the photostand icon located on the desktop of your PC.

• Since it has been set as a autorun program during the installation, it works automatically after the next booting up the computor.
  If you don't want to autorun it everytime, please remove the short-cut in the system "start up" folder. In the case you should manually start the application from the launcher icon on the screen or the appication menu, and wallpapers are changed only during it running.
• It comes back to background process when pushing "close" button.
• When you want to terminate "photostand", i.e. not to change wallpapers anymore, please "exit" in the "File" menu or push "X" of the window's title bar.
• It also supports "suspend" state. It is useful when you burn DVDs or execute some realtime tasks.If want to suspend, please select "suspend" from the right click menu of the icon located in the status bar, or "suspend" button on the right-bottom side of the main window. When suspended, status icon will be overlayed with "suspended mark".
  If you want to resume again, select "Resume" on the right click menu, or the suspend button with label changed to "Resume" on the main window.
• (*) The wallpaper wouldn't be changed on "Windows 7 Home Basic", if "desktop background" is set to "Solid Colours". Please change the setting to another such as "Windows Wallpapers" or "Pictures".

The application is confugured with buttons on the main windows and "Preference" menu in the "Edit" title menu.
Configurations are effective after changing on the window for the running process, and "Save settings" is needed if you want to run with the same configuration at the next time.

Interval of chaging pictures.

Style of displaying wallpaper

If size of the picture is different from the screen resolution, you can specify how to display it on the screen.
Default is "Cover the screen".

Original picture	Screen size	centered
In the explanation, the screen size assumes to be 1024x768 and the picture size is 600x600.	The picture is expanded to the screen size without keeping X-Y ratio.	The picture is located on the center of the screen without changing size.
Tiled	In the screen	Cover the screen
The pictures are tiled to cover the screen.	The picture is expanded to maximum to be able to show the whole picture.	The picture is expanded to minimum to cover the whole screen. It doesn't violate its X-Y ratio.

Ratio of local file to the web picture

Picture folders and keywords of pictures

Buttons

It explains functions of buttons located on the right-bottom side of the main window.

• Next Picture: It changes a wallpaper immediately without waiting the interval. Not satisfied with the current wallpaper, try pushing this button.
• Suspend/Resume: It toggles suspend/resume photostand. When suspending, the process is running, but wallpapers are not changed.
• Save Settings: Storing the Settings/configuration to the file.
• Close: Saving settings and closing the main window. If you want to show the window again, click the icon located on the status bar.

It explains functions of buttons located on the left-bottom side of the main window.

• Input Filename: Putting a filename or file path of the next wallpaper in the form by editing or copy/paste.
• Select Picture: Selecting a filename of the next wallpaer from the dialog of selecting a file.

Option Settings

It sets the rule of sequence how to choose pictures and the root folder for "Add Folder" dialog.

The menu is opened to select "Edit" menu -> "Preference".

• Folder Root: The root folder of the "Add Folder" dialog. At the default, it is "My Picture", and it can be changed to "My Computer". If you have pictures stored in other than "My Picture", use this option.
• How to select the next: At the default, pictures are choose randomly, and alternative option is to choose one by alphabetical order of its name.
• Search all subfolders: Searching all subfolders to make list of pictures for wallpapers. It is OK only to copy new pictures under the specified folders to add them into the pool of wallpapers without changing settings.
• Continue after direct selecting wallpaper: It controls how to select the next wallpaper after selecting one by "input Filename" or "Select Wallpaper" dialog. "Continuous" is selecting the next one as sequential manner, if the current one is contained in the "Wallpaper Folders". "One Time" is manage the current one as tentative, and selecting the next according to the rule set in "How to select the next". The menu should be greyed out when setting "randomly" on the "How to select the next".
  The setting is useful, for example, you have pictures took today and put them in a wallpaper folder, and you want to watch them immediately. In the case you set "Continuous" and selecting the first one with the dialog.

FAQ

The latest version is 2.3.1, and the installer is photostand.en.msi.

Supported platforms are Win32 platform newer than Windows XP (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2007, Windows 7). Since development and testing is on the Windows Vista, folder structure is a little different on Windows XP than the following description. However it is working with no problem.

1. It requires .NET framework newer than the version 3.5, please check if installed.
   If your Windows have been autoupdated with "Window Update", it has already been installed. (It is also OK for Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, those have .NET framework 3.5 SP1.). If not installed, install one like (*1) now
2. Download photostand.msi, and execute the installer (select "install" on the right click menu). The installer automatically installs everything. In case of Vista the system ask you whether being OK for installation of the program, please answer "Yes" on the dialog.
3. Installation procedure is (1) copying files, adding menu in start-menu, creating icon on the desktop, and registering it in the start up.
4. After finishing installer, please restart the computer or start "photostand" from the desktop icon. (Without doing this, it runs automatically after the next booting PC.

(*1)Do Windows Update, and .NET framework 3.5 SP1 is installed as a mandatory. If you have some reason not to software updating, please download .NET framework 3.5 run time environment from the download page of Microsoft SiteExecute dotNetFx35setup.exe, and installation automatically start.(*1)

By the way, if you update the application to the newer version, please uninstall the older version before installing it. First terminating the process, second uninstalling the older version, then the newer version is able to install. In the case, all settings are kept on the new version.

It can be removed from "Uninstall or change programs" safely and completely. Selecting "photostand" in the program list of the uninstall window, and do uninstall,

Anyway, installed files are as follows.Uninstaller automatically removes the files except (*)

• photostand.exe in {ProgramFilesFolder}\Nikep\
• A shortcut in {ProgramMenuFolder}\photostand\
• A shortcut in {StartupFolder}
• Two configuration files in {AppDataFolder}\Nikep\photostand\(*)

The source code of the application is photostand-src-2.4.0.zip.

It can be compiled with Microsoft Visual C#.
And the installer can be built with WiX from photostand.wxs in the archive.
It seems that you might know about VisualStudio better than I. If you want to know about the details about building it, please let me know by e-mail.

• 2.4.0: Adding a function as an option to search wallpapers below the specified folders recursively.
• 2.3.2: Fix the bug often to show a windows wallpaper after booting up PC.
• 2.3.1: Display UI of the running process, when a user is going to start the program during a process has been already running.
• 2.3.0: Add new keywords, "design/anime/male/people).
• 2.2.0: Add "select picture" dialog button to select the next wallpaper. Add option "Continue after selecting directly".
• 2.1.2: Resetting configuration is implemented. Change specifications for automatic saving configuration when closing UI. Bug-fix: Help menu is linked to the EN page instead of JP page.
• 2.1.1: Bug-fix (Corruption of X-Y ratio for some pictures, invalid judgement of timer expiration when starting.)
• 2.1.0: Supporting JPEG auto-direction correction according to the Orientation of EXIF.
• 2.0.0: Supporting locale or language "en" as well as "ja-JP".
• 1.1.2: Add support for a new web keyword "object".
• 1.1.1: Supporting suspend/resume state.
• 1.1.0: supporting options for choosing sequential order and root folder of add folder dialog. Add feature to show picture name with tool tips of the icon.
• 1.0.0: Adding the function to use web pictures as a wallpaper.
• 0.9.2: Bug fixed: "Cover the screen" function.
• 0.9.1: Add configuration for displaying style of wallpapers.