How to use gPhotoShow to build a large digital picture frame which is perfect for all photographers
This is the story of a recent DIY project of mine. In my free time I like to take photographs of landscapes, nature and of couse my family. With the arrival of digital photography, after a quick review, most of the photos remain hidden on hard drives so I thought why not use the software I developed and an unused monitor to see the photos when we are at home?
Hardware - PC
Since gPhotoShow is a windows based software I needed a mini pc able to run Windows 10. Nowadays almost any pc is powerful enough to run gPhotoShow, so I searched Amazon for something suitable. A mini pc or pc stick based on Intel Celeron or Atom Z8350 are the best choices, Celeron is more powerful so I preferred this one.
I found a Minisforum N40, it has an Intel Celeron N4000, a dual core cpu, 4Gb ram, 64 Gb eMMC, fanless (no noise !) plus the usual stuff (USB3, Wifi, Network) and the ability to install an SSD. SSD is quite useful, if like me, you have a huge picture library.
Hardware - Monitor
When photographers look at digital picture frames, one question comes first: What is the aspect ratio of the display?
A photographer typically works with 3:2 images from DSLR camera. Screens, however, used to be 4:3 in the early personal computer age, then moved to 16:10 and now the most commonly available are 16:9 and even wider.
Showing 3:2 photographs on a 16:9 display means cropping of 15% unless you are willing to accept ugly black bars. And that means that on many photos the image composition is messed up.
16:10 is almost 3:2 and therefore more suitable for a digital picture frame
For this project I started using an unused monitor I had at home, it's a Philips 22" with a 16:10 aspect ratio, so perfect for a picture frame.
I could also mount the mini pc on the back of the monitor
