Let’s be honest, digital photo frames can look tacky – white bands filling the unused portions of the screen or images cropped to leave half of grandma’s face; a dangly wire to the bulky power adapter; constrasty images when you look into the image from different angles; and images can be slow to load. Some of these are limitations of technology or where you install your digital photo frame. But there are some things you can do to make it look more like a picture frame and less like a computer screen hanging on the wall.

The biggest issue with digital photo frames is getting images that look good on the screen. Unless you take perfectly cropped pictures with a camera that has the exact aspect ratio as your photo frame, you will end up with “filler bars” on the sides of the image when it is displayed. Some frames have a “smart” display that tries to zoom the image and then crop to make it fill the screen but this can lead to unexpected and embarrassing results.

ImageMagick may be your first step to happiness with your digital photo frame. It won’t make you pictures look like Ansel Adams but it will make them look like they were framed for display.

convert source-image.jpg -resize "1280x800" -quality 75 MIN-target-image.jpg
convert source-image.jpg -resize "1280x800^" -quality 75 MAX-target-image.jpg
convert MAX-target-image.jpg -gravity Center -crop 1280x800+0+0 -quality 75 MID-target-image.jpg

These three command lines give you three different images. The reference to “1280×800″ represents the screen of our test frame. You will substitute the screen resolution of your frame. Note the second like looks almost the same as the first but there is a carrot “^” at the end of the screen resolution. The first line tells ImageMagick’s “convert” program to insure the target will fit within the specified resolution while the second line will create an image that has its smaller dimension no less than the specified resolution. Let’s look at an example …

Let’s start with an image from a point-n-shoot camera that is 2816×2112 pixels. The three commands will give you the following:

1. PF-MIN  is 1067×800 pixels
2. PF-MAX is 1280×960 pixels
3. PF-MID is 1280×800 pixels (with 80 pixels trimmed from the top and bottom of PF-MAX)

If your original image was taken in landscape, then PF-MID is probably what you’d want to display. If you need every bit of your original, then you’d use PF-MIN.

If you look back at the three commands, you will also see the JPEG quality has been set to 75%. This makes the images smaller and will allow the digital photo frame to load them faster. At the same time, the quality is high enough that you will no notice on the screen.

If you take lots of vertical pictures and you have mounted your digital photo frame vertically, ImageMagick can help with that too. Just add “-rotate -90″ or “-rotate 90″ to the command ahead of the quality parameter on the first to commands. You may need to run an experiment to see if you need to rotate clockwise or counter clockwise to match how you have setup your frame.

So, that takes care of getting your images ready for display. Here are a few tips for installing the digital photo frame.

If the frame will be mounted on a wall in a highly visible location (and why wouldn’t it), see if there is an electrical outlet on the other side of the wall. It’s easy to create a small hole in the wall behind the frame where it will not be visible, and then run the power wire to an adjacent room or better yet a closet.

Consider getting a more attractive frame and mat. Most digital photo frames come with a cheap black plastic frame and a white paper mat. It’s not difficult to replace these with a traditional wood frame and a mat that works with your room’s decor.

Before nailing your digital photo frame to the wall, load a picture and have someone hold it at various heights. The viewing angle will change the quality of the image. If you have rotated the frame vertically or even upside down – this latter idea can help hide unsightly controls or slots on the side of the frame – it will change the viewing angle. You may find that you want to mount the digital photo frame a little higher than a traditional picture to improve the view of the screen.

So there you have it. With a few tweaks to the images, and a little attention to the installation of your digital photo frame, you can turn it from geek to chic in no time !