14 DAY TRIAL // We all love taking pictures, capturing different moments of our life and remembering them later. Even if we have hundreds of pictures, we will always have a few of them that are closest to our heart, because they represent special events, persons or memories from our life. I, for one, have the picture of my girlfriend on my desktop to keep me company when we are not together. But what if I have at least two or three picture that I want to keep on my desktop at the same time? This problem was solved with Photo Desktop, a product created by Alwin Troost. Photo Desktop allows you to "spread" on your desktop as many pictures as you want and arrange/rearrange them at your will.
In order to have access to all its features and remove any limitations that Photo Desktop has, you have to pay around $14.50 for a single user license. It's more than affordable for any of us. If you buy the license you will unlock more features and use this program to the fullest. You have more photo customization, unlimited photo changes and it will not stop working after 10 changes, you can define more than 3 photosets, make more than 10 spy photos and create unlimited updates for this program.
The Looks
You will enjoy using Photo Desktop even if you are at home or at work, because it has an easy-to-use interface. A small icon, representing a cat, will appear on the top right corner of your screen after you finish installing the program. Click on the icon and you will see a small menu appear in front of you. It will give you quick access to Photo Desktop editor, where you can edit any picture you want on your desktop, activate/deactivate the program anytime you want, or access Photoset changer in order to change the way pictures look like, by creating different Photosets that you can access anytime you want. You can access the program's preferences as well. As you will see, there are enough options to play with and you will enjoy every one of them.
The Works
As I said before, you can access all program's properties through that icon on the top menu of your screen. All the magic starts with Photo Desktop Editor. If you don't know how to set your pictures on your desktop, don't worry because Photo Desktop has a solution. Just click on the "Shuffle the current photoset" button and the program will randomly change the position for all the photos you have on your desktop. You can do that anytime you feel like it, there are no limits. You also have the option to schedule Photoset to change the position of any photo you have on your desktop, so you will never get bored of the view, and the effort for achieving this is minimum. If your Mac has an integrated camera, by using the camera button you can easily take snapshots of yourself and put them on your desktop right away. With the Photoset button, show or hide the list of Photosets that you have created so far.
When you open Photo Desktop Editor, you will see Photo Info panel as well. Here you can take any photo one by one and change it as you wish. You are also allowed to change the size of any photo, or rotate it just for fun. You can change the photo frame with just one click or create some nice shadow effects. If you have written a title for any of your photo, change that as well. The title can be made thicker or thinner, and it can even be included into the photo. Sometimes we have a picture that we like a lot, but we don't want on our desktop the entire photo. Surely you could cut & copy the part you like, but it's so much easier to use the zoom option from the small photo source panel. To add a photo on your Desktop, use your iSight camera, access your iPhoto library or use the old fashion way of drag & drop.
If you think these are all the options you can play with, you're wrong. Click on the program's menu and go the Preferences menu. Here you are permitted to change how the program works or looks in general terms. You also have the option to set Photo Desktop to start at login or to make it check for updates on the Internet periodically.
The Good
Photo Desktop allows your creativity to express itself. We all like to have photos on our desktop but this program puts everything in a different perspective. Every option, every feature of Photo Desktop will make you love this program even more.
The Bad
Honestly, I don't have anything bad to say about Photo Desktop. Maybe Photo Desktop should have more features, including more animations and Photoset presets to play with, but this can be easily fixed in other future versions.
The Truth
You will be impressed once you have tried Photo Desktop. For just $14.50, you can put on your desktop as many photos as you want and modify them anyway you want. It is extremely easy to use, so all you have to do is try it out for a couple of days and I assure you that you will buy it instantly.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
