Filter photos in a slideshow

Endless Slideshow Screensaver offers several ways to filter photos from your local or network folders added to the [ My media folders ] tab of the screensaver settings. The first and easiest one is to exclude sub-folders with pictures you do not want to see. So, once the folder is added to the [ My media folders ] tab you can click the small plus sign near the folder name to open the list of sub-folders:

Now you can simply clear the boxes near the sub-folders you want to exclude from the slideshow. If there are more sub-folders that you want to exclude than those that you want to include, then you can click the [ Disable sub-folders ] button while the top-level folder is selected in the list to clear all sub-folder boxes automatically. Then you can check the boxes only for sub-folders you want to include in the slideshow.

Another, more advanced way of filtering the photos in your slideshows is using the media filters. These filters will allow you to exclude photos with selected tags or ratings, include only recently taken photos, or use only photos with specified size, orientation, and aspect ratio. Endless Slideshow Screensaver Pro allows you to apply an individual set of media filters to every top-level folder added to the [ My media folders ] list. So, you need to select the folder you want to apply filters to in the list first, and then click the [ Media filters ] button to open the filter configuration window.

Media filters are separated into several groups shown in the corresponding tabs of the filter configuration window. Only the files that pass all the selected filters in all filter groups will be added to the slideshow. Thus, you can combine any number of filters described below to create a perfect slideshow.

File type and name filters

Filters in this group allow you to use file path and name information to add the files to the slideshow or ignore them.

The [ File types filters ] use Windows file masks you provide in the corresponding field to include or exclude files. These masks are applied only to the file name and extension, not the file path. If you select the [ Include only files with names matching one of these masks ] option and enter one or more Windows file masks, then only the files with names matching one of the given masks will be added to the slideshow, and the rest will be ignored. If you select the [ Exclude files with names matching one of these masks ] option, then files matching one of the given masks will be ignored and the rest will be added to the slideshow. If you leave this field empty, then no file type filters will be applied to your files.

Windows file masks consist of literal characters, wildcards that can match any characters, and sets that match a single character that is included or excluded in this set:

• ? is a wildcard that matches any single character. For example:
  filename?.jpg will match filename1.jpg, filenameA.jpg, filename-.jpg, but won't match filename12.jpg, file.jpg, filename1.png.



• * is a wildcard that matches a group of zero or more characters. For example:
  *.jpg will match filename.jpg, file.jpg, f.jpg, but won't match filename.gif or filename.jpeg.
  *.* will match any file.
  img_*.* will match any file name that begins with img_ and has any extension: img_file.png, img_1.jpg, img_filename.gif.



• [abc456] is a set that matches a single character from that set. For example:
  file[123].jpg will only match file1.jpg, file2.jpg or file3.jpg.



• [a-z] is a set that matches a single character from the given range. For example:
  file_[a-d].png will match file_a.png, file_b.png, file_c.png, file_d.png.
  file-[k-n4-9].jpeg will match file-m.jpeg, file-5.jpeg, file-9.jpeg


If you add ! as the first character in a set, like this: [!abc456], then this set will match any character that is not in this set. For example: [!ak-p2-6] will match any character, except a, k, l m, n, o, p, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

The [ File name filters ] allow you to include or exclude the files based on their full file names including the path. If you check the [ Include files only if their full path contains text from one of these lines ] box and enter one or more lines of text into the field below, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will add to the slideshow only those files that contain text from one of the given lines in their full path.

For example, if you enter:

\Vacations\
\Family

Then the following files will be added to the slideshow:

C:\My Photos\Vacations\2024\Summer\img_2094.jpg
C:\My Photos\Family\2022 - reunion\photo_123.jpg
C:\My Photos\Family archive\1980\photo_345.jpg

If you check the [ Exclude files if their full path contains text from one of these lines ] and enter one or more lines of text into the edit field below, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will ignore files with text from one of those lines in their full path. If both boxes are checked and there are one or more lines of text in both fields, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will check if the file name matches one of the [ Included ] filters. If it does then the software will add this file only if it doesn't match any of the [ Excluded ] filters.

File size and date filters

[ File size filters ] allow you to limit the size of files added to the slideshow. If you check the [ Minimum allowed size ] box and enter a file size into the corresponding field, then only files with the specified size and bigger will be added to the slideshow. If you check the [ Maximum allowed size ] box and enter a file size into the corresponding field, then only files with the specified size and smaller will be added to the slideshow. If both boxes are checked, then only files with the size between the specified minimum and maximum will be in the slideshow.

[ File date filters ] work pretty much the same as the [ File size filters ] but with a file's creation and modification date. And, just like with the file size, the specified dates are considered to be within the allowed range. So, for example, if you check the [ Minimum file creation ] box and select the following date: 2023.01.31 09:00:00 and the file has the exact same creation date or bigger, then this file will be added to the slideshow.

Picture size and orientation filters

If one of the filters from this tab is selected, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will have to load every picture file during the folder scan to get the required image information. This will slow down the scan process, plus, if the software fails to read the image information from the file, then this file will not be added to the slideshow.

[ Picture size filters ] allow you to include pictures only of the desired size (in pixels) and to filter out pictures that are too big or too small. So, for example, if you want to see only pictures that are at least 1920x1080 pixels and bigger, then check the [ Minimum picture width in pixels ] box and enter 1920 into the corresponding field. Then check the [ Minimum picture height in pixels ] box and enter 1080 into the corresponding field. If you want only pictures that are exactly 1920x1080 pixels, then also check the [ Maximum picture width in pixels ] box and enter 1920 and check the [ Maximum picture height in pixels ] box and enter 1080.

[ Picture orientation filter ] can be used to allow only portrait-oriented pictures or only landscape-oriented pictures. Pictures with the portrait orientation are tall pictures with image height in pixels bigger than the image width. Landscape-oriented pictures are wide pictures with the image width bigger than the image height. If this filter is used then all square pictures with an image width equal to the image height will be filtered out and not used in the slideshow.

[ Aspect ratio filter ] allows you to use only pictures with the selected aspect ratio in the slideshow. The aspect ratio describes the relationship between the pictures' width and height. Please note that it refers to the dimensional ratio but not the actual resolution or total pixels. A square 1:1 picture could be 100x100 pixels or it could be 2400x2400 pixels.

Metadata

Just like with the [ Picture size and orientation ] filters, if any of the filters on this tab are used - Endless Slideshow Screensaver will load every picture file during the scan process to read its metadata. This may slow down the folder scan process.

[ Tags (keywords) filter ] lets you filter pictures in your slideshow based on the specified keywords or tags. If you check the [ Include only pictures with these keywords ] box and enter one or more keywords into the corresponding field, then your slideshow will only consist of photos with one of the specified keywords. Keywords must be separated with a semicolon, like this:

keyword1; two words; three-word keyword

If a photo doesn't have any keywords and you have the [ Include only pictures with these keywords ] box checked, then this photo will not be added to the slideshow.

If you check the [ Exclude pictures with these keywords ] box and enter one or more keywords into the corresponding field, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will ignore photos that have any of the specified keywords. If a photo doesn't have any keywords at all - it will be added to the slideshow.

If both keyword boxes are checked, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will include only photos with at least one of the [ Included ] keywords and have no [ Excluded ] keywords. Photos without any keywords will not be used for the slideshow in this case.

The [ Rating filter ] is there to let you view only photos with a given rating in your slideshow. You can specify the minimum and maximum allowed photo rating by checking the corresponding box and selecting a rating (1 to 5). If you want photos that were not rated in your slideshow - check the [ Include unrated pictures ] box too. Otherwise, unrated photos will be ignored if the [ Minimum rating ] or [ Maximum rating ] box is checked.

The [ Date filters ] on the [ Metadata ] tab use the selected metadata date field value to filter the photos. The photo creation date stored in the metadata of the picture may differ from the file creation and modification date. The drop-down list allows you to select a specific EXIF or IPTC date field, but if you are not sure - use the [ Windows Explorer: Date time taken ] option. If this option is selected, then Endless Slideshow Screensaver will check the following fields until it finds a non-empty value:

EXIF: Date Time Original
IPTC: Date Created
XMP: Date Time Original

If all of the above fields are empty or do not exist then the file creation date is used.