How do I alter the length of slideshow timings?

Not sure about your request.

? I thought I was clear ? I want to alter the time each picture stays onscreen : the default is only about 3 seconds before the next picture appears - it must be a system command somewhere, and therefore should be able to override it using Terminal? Or something?

I'm talking here about the FINDER slideshow by the way, not iPhoto.

The interesting thing here, in what you found, is the 2 parameters autoPlayTime and manualTime : especially the latter. That seems to imply that there is the possibility of manual control over the time a picture is displayed.

The question is, where is that manual control located? After all, it wouldn't surely exist in Config.data with a value of 0.0 if Apple didn't intend for that to be overridden by users?

I agree about messing with System files, and I wouldn't even attempt that. But I would guess there might be a Unix command that could be used in Terminal to do the same thing?

Thank you jsd2 and BDAqua for your suggestions here. I have been pondering why the Finder slideshow would not provide such a BASIC user control as how long each picture stays onscreen. (After all, this is fundamental to traditional slideshows using a projector : and it would exist too in the Finder slideshow using the pause-and-click-through-manually option .... but without a remote control to operate this, it's just about useless to simulate a slideshow on traditional lines! i.e. with more than one viewer seated around the screen. Unless Front Row (which I actually never use) would work in this way, for Finder slideshows?). I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

An answer of sorts occurs to me - Finder was never intended to replace iPhoto, even though the Finder functionality has been around far longer. Apple, I guess, intends me to import all my pictures into iPhoto. I simply don't want to do that : I am a Photoshop person and keep pictures in my own arrangement of personal folders, and do not wish to have them all duplicated in the iPhoto Library simply in order to run a slideshow.

So unless there is a utility somewhere out there which will do this, or I try using Terminal to override the System settings, then I am stymied on this. Yet another example of Apple telling me "either you're a geek, in which case go ahead and do what you like, at your own risk, with our silent blessing... or you're a simple user who will accept our pre-defined parameters without question". No middle ground.

Thanks jsd2 - this will do the trick I think. It is slightly counter-intuitive to get it started (you don't select multiple pictures as you do in Finder - you point it at a directory, click the file where you want to start, then click Slideshow; CocoaSlideShow then moves down the list in turn). After I worked that out, it seemed to be quite a useful little thing.

Thank you.

Anyone ?