I've taken over 14,000 digital photographs over the last decade. I run a Vault 3 slide show to display them by my desktop computer, with a $110 17" LCD monitor that I recently purchased.

I also display the pictures in digital photo frames. I've had numerous problems with digital photo frames. For instance, slow, low-quality scaling, sometimes with the aspect ratio ignored. Also, the frames I have will crash if there are more than a relatively small number of photos on the flash drive. For example, my Mustek frames can only handle about 1,900 pictures. Additionally, many photo frames have either poor or non-existent mechanisms to randomize the order of photos in slideshows.

I recently updated Vault 3 to export photographs to devices such as photo frames, with options to work around or mitigate the above problems:

Each photo is scaled to the specified resolution, with the original aspect ratio maintained, so that your photo frame won't have to scale. You can specify a total number of photos in case your frame can only handle a given number of photos. Check the Shuffle check box to randomize the order.

If you want to prevent certain photographs from the export, go to Options / Settings. Select the Photos & Slideshows tab and specify exclusion text. I use this mechanism to filter out photo files, such as scanned images of my articles, that I don't want to see in slideshows or on my photo frames. When I export photos to my photo frame, I choose the Shuffle option and specify the maximum number of photo files that my frame can accommodate. That was I get a unique sample of photographs, selected from the 14,000 photos in my archive.

At this point I consider Vault 3 to be feature-complete. Have I left out any must-have features? If so, please let me know by commenting on this blog post. Use the "Comment on this Blog Post" hyperlink below. Thanks!