IPhoto 6 slideshows not full screen!!!

Question

First of all, as this problem has not changed since iPhoto 5.02 on OS X 10.3.9, let me provide you with some background...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1425902&#1425902
Now, let me detail the problem again. I have a Mac Mini 1.25 Ghz with 512 MB RAM connected to a 20" Apple Cinema Display (aluminum) running at its native resolution of 1680 x 1050. Prior to iPhoto version 5.02, if I watched a slideshow, either by clicking the "Play" button on an album or creating a full fledged slideshow, the pictures in the slideshow would be fit to the width of my display and then cropped on the top and bottom so that the picture would fill all the real-estate on my display. I believe this may have only been the case when viewing with Ken Burns effect enabled... in any case it was exactly the way that I wanted it to work. After updating to iPhoto 5.02 and on every subsequent version of iPhoto all the way unitl iPhoto 6, this is not the behavior. Now, black bars are inserted on the left and right of my display and the photo is displayed in a box in the center that fills the height of the display and is approximately 4:3 in aspect ratio. No combination of settings for the automatic ken burns effect, scale pictures to fit screen, or slideshow format settings have yeided a result that fills the entire screen... most make it look worse. The only thing that seems to help is lowering the resolution of the display from the native of 1680 x 1050 to 1024 x 768 or something similar. Obviously this deteriorates the quality of the images.
Apparently, this was a design decision made by apple...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301667
First of all, it makes no sense to me that iPhoto should decide my computer isn't capable of displaying full screen slideshows when it was perfectly capable of doing so prior to iPhoto 5.02. Secondly, the proposed work around is ridiculous. The amount of time and effort needed to produce a QT movie for each slideshow you want to show full screen greatly reduces the functionality of the otherwise awesome slideshow features... not to mention it greatly reduces the quality of the slideshow.
I am posting to again make it known that this is still an issue for many users in the latest version of iPhoto. People still want it fixed. And many people with affected computers might not even know that iPhoto is supposed to display full screen slideshows if you want them.
Now, I apologize in advance for the bold I'm about to use, but this is the most important part of this post and I hope someone at Apple reads it...
Make an option in iPhoto to enable full screen slideshows even on computers that the program deems incapable!
That way users can accept your automatic determination of this capability, or they can judge for themselves whether or not full screen slideshows are worth a "potential" degradation in performance. You can even worn them once when they enable the option that it may cause decreased performance on their hardware. That way they'll know you tried.
Ok, there... now that that is out of my system, does anyone else have any ideas or would like to add something?
Mac Mini 1.25 Ghz G4, 512 MB RAM   Mac OS X (10.4.4)  

Answer 1

I take a lot of pictures with 2-3 digital cameras (as a hobby). I use my old 400MHz G4 TiBook as my picture bank when I travel. I got very frustrated when I realized that the screen resolution is set to 800*600 when you do a slideshow in iPhoto, and there is no way to change that.
This is especially bothering when the pictures are taken with my DSLR, but looking at pictures from a 5 MB camera on a 0,5 MB resolution screen is a drag in any case.
I think that I have found a solution to this, however. It would be nice if someone else could try to verify my results. Very simple:
- Close iPhoto and get a plist editor (I used PlistEdit Pro which I found in Macupdate).
- With the editor, open the iPhoto preferences file: /Users/Your_Userame/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist
- There's a property called SlideshowFixedScreenRes close close to the end of the file. Change it's value from NO to YES and save the plist file. Relaunch iPhoto.
This worked very well with the TiBook. Your mileage may vary, though. If you find that it works for you, please let the others know.
If this preference property really is the legitimate place for setting this, it makes me wonder why Apple is so arrogant that they don't give us a switch somewhere for this.
NOTE: If you try this the risk is yours. I don't think that the risk in this case is very severe however - if you throw the iPhoto plist file in the Trash it will be rebuilt when you relaunch iPhoto.
Best regards, Jukka
Dual 2,5 GHz G5, 400 MHz TiBook   Mac OS X (10.4.5)