Collage v1.0 was created by P. S. Neeley.  (c) 1994-1995,  All rights reserved.

How to use Collage

Collage is a Windows 3.1 screensaver that creates beautiful collages from a collection of up to 100 of your favorite BMP picture files.   Collage picks from these pictures randomly to create an ever changing screensaver screen.

The Collage control panel (from which you accessed this help file) is divided into four quadrants. You use the controls in these quadrants to control how, or if, Collage creates collages from your files.   In the center is the tall 'Ok' button that you will click to end the screensaver set-up process once you have all your options set.   The controls in the 4 quadrants are as follows:

Upper left quadrant:

This quadrant has a scroll bar that controls how often Collage changes the picture it is using in its painting.   Scrolling to a small number tells Collage to change its working picture often and make the collage more complex.   A higher number tells collage to change its working picture less often and lessens the complexity of the collage.

Upper right quadrant:

This quadrant has a drive list box and a directory list box that let you tell Collage where to find the BMP picture files to use as collage material.  Click on the drive list box to select the drive, then double-click on a directory within that drive in the directory list box.   The current directory is marked by the line of open folder symbols.

Lower left quadrant

This quadrant allows you to provide password protection in your screen saver.  If a password is active, you cannot shut-down the screen saver unless you know the password.  To continue to use collage without password protection, simply leave all three boxes empty.  To create a password when none existed before, fill in the New Password and retyped New Password boxes.   To clear a password and turn off Password protection, type the Old Password in the Old Password box but leave the New Password and retyped New Password boxes empty.   If you want to change a password, you'll need to fill in all three boxes.

Lower right quadrant:

This quadrant contains 3 controls.

The check-box labeled 'Yes I want to see a collage' tells Collage whether you want to see collages on the screen.  If you uncheck this box, Collage will not create collages but will simply display your BMPs as is -- just like a picture viewer.

The scroll bar labeled '% Horz. sweeping' lets you control how much vertical striping vs. Horizontal sweeping occurs in the collage.  Usually a fairly small number like 5 to 10% is best.

The scroll bar labeled 'Painting speed' lets you control how fast the stripes of picture are painted in the collage.  For a very fast computer, you may want a lower value here.

Once you are done setting the options you want, click the 'Ok' command button to save your set-up.   This will unload the Collage control panel and place you back at the desktop control panel where you can test the screensaver if you wish.