How to Use VLC as an Image and Photo Slideshow Viewer?

It may or may not come as a big surprise, but VLC Media Player can open images as well. That’s right! Drag any JPG image on to VLC Media Player and see how it will gleefully open right inside the application. Now, this functionality isn’t limited to a single image. If you drag and drop multiple photos, it will display all of them as a slideshow. One image will be given 10 seconds of screen time. The next one will load, and the slideshow will continue. Once it reaches the end, it might loop or not loop from the start depending on what setting you have. It is just like creating a playlist for music but instead with photos.

So, how do you properly use this feature?

The drag and drop method is the best way to use it. You can either drag a single photograph or multiple images directly to VLC’s interface or to the playlist [CTRL + L] window.

But note that folders having a collection of photos inside them cannot be dragged to the player. We will have to manually select the images inside the folder and drop it on the playlist. That means selecting the individual JPG files.

So, a playlist can have .jpg files instead of the usuals.

Additionally, the Media > Open File [CTRL + O] method can also be used to open photos inside your computer. Just browse to the folder containing all the photos that you want to open after hitting Media > Open File. Then from the dropdown on the right, instead of Media Files (*.3g2, *.3gp …) option, choose the one that says All Files (*).

After that, all the files including .jpg files will be displayed. You can select and open them like you would open any other media file.

Changing the 10-second per Photo Limit

When a photo is opened, it displays on the screen for 10 seconds. If multiple photos are chosen, then one photo will have 10 seconds and the next one will come on the screen. It is just like a slideshow. The pause, play, next and previous buttons can help in navigating the images.

But what if you wanted to change this 10-second limit to 3 seconds or 20 seconds. It can be done from the advanced settings.

• Navigate to Tool > Preferences
• Click on All to reveal Advanced Preferences
• Navigate to Input / Codecs > Demuxers > Image
• Change the value of Duration in seconds from 10.00 to something else (like 3)
• Click on Save.

Now, all the photos in your VLC’s slideshow will display for the new defined number of seconds.

What Else Can We do After Opening Photos?

After opening photos inside VLC Media Player, we can do a lot of things that we do to videos. If you think about it, an image is a single frame of a video. So, modify that frame with all the customization options that are present in VLC. That means, we can apply video effects like rotating, adjusting image contrast and brightness and overlaying text or logos. We can’t use audio effects on it for obvious reasons. It would have been cool to have a background audio while the picture slideshow was in action. But that is a feature that remains to be discovered.