Turn a Photo Into Desktop Wallpaper

Decorate your Windows desktop with shots of friends and family.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Turn a Photo Into Desktop Wallpaper

In the old days, it seemed like everyone kept framed photos of friends and family on their desks. Times have changed. In my experience, it's a lot more common these days to see those pictures show up as wallpaper on computer displays. This week, let's look at the nitty-gritty of optimizing photos for wallpaper duty on a Microsoft Windows desktop.

Know Your Resolution

The first step to turning a picture into a wallpaper image is to determine the screen resolution that your monitor is running. This way, you can easily make the picture fit the screen properly.

To check your screen resolution, right-click on any blank spot on the Windows desktop. Choose Properties from the context menu to get the Display Properties dialog box. Click the Settings tab, and you'll see something like this.

My desktop extends across two screens, which is why you see two monitor icons in this image. If your computer has only one display connected, you'll see one monitor icon.

In the Screen Resolution section of the dialog box, you'll see the pixel size of your display. Write it down; in my case, it's 1280 by 1024 pixels. Click Cancel to close the box, since we don't want to change anything.

Resize Your Picture

Open your favorite image editor and load the picture that you want to display on your desktop. I'll demonstrate this using Corel's Paint Shop Pro 9.

My goal is to make the picture fit the screen perfectly, so I need to do two things: First, I'll crop it to the correct aspect ratio for my monitor; second, I'll size it to fit.

For this to work properly, you should start with a picture with a resolution that's at least as large as your screen's. To check your picture's resolution, choose Image, Image Information from the image editor's menu and check the resolution in pixels (it's on the Dimensions line in the Image section of the dialog box). If it passes the test, you can move on to the cropping stage. For example, if your screen resolution is 1024 by 768, then the picture needs to be no smaller than 1024 pixels in the X dimension and 768 pixels in the Y dimension. If you want to try this with a smaller picture, skip down to "For Smaller Images," below.

Now click the Crop tool in the toolbar (it's the third from the top). Find the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen. If it isn't there, toggle it on by choosing View, Palettes, Tool Options. Make sure that the Units menu is set to Pixels and that the "Maintain aspect ratio" check box is not selected. Then type the pixel size of your monitor resolution in the width and height boxes. For my monitor, for instance, I would type 1280 for Width and 1024 for Height.

Next, check the "Maintain aspect ratio" check box, then position and size the crop frame to taste. You can move it around the picture and drag the corners to make it larger or smaller. Since the aspect ratio is locked, it will fit your computer monitor perfectly no matter what you do. When the crop frame represents the picture you want on your monitor, click the check box in the Tool Options palette to accept the change.

Now it's time to resize the image. Choose Image, Resize and check the original dimensions at the top of the dialog box. Here's what you'd see in Paint Shop Pro.

In the Pixel Dimensions section of the dialog box, make sure the menu's set to Pixels, then enter your resolution into the width and height boxes. It shouldn't matter if the dialog box is set to Lock Aspect Ratio, since you've already cropped the picture to the correct aspect ratio. Click OK to save the change.

Set Your Wallpaper

Finally, it's time. Save your picture with a new file name so you don't lose the original image; you can keep the new image wherever you like. Close your image editor.

Go back to your desktop and open the Display Properties dialog box again (right-click the desktop and choose Properties). Click the Desktop tab and then click the Browse button at the bottom of the dialog box. Find the picture you just created and click Open, then click OK. You're done!

Here's what I ended up with.

For Smaller Images

If you have a picture that's smaller than the desktop, you can skip all of the cropping and resizing steps above, go right to the Display Properties Dialog box on the desktop, and just select your photo file as the background image. Then use the Position menu to choose whether you want the image centered in the monitor or stamped in repeating tiles across the display. You can also set the background color of the desktop. When you're done, click OK--you've just made wallpaper.

Dave's Favorites: Get Organized With Fast Photo Renamer

If you have a thousand photos on your computer's hard disk with names like DSC_0016.JPG and IMG_0556.JPG, then you need some help. Logical names make your photos far easier to find, so it's worth the effort to change the file names the images have when they arrive on your PC. Fast Photo Renamer is the latest utility that tries to simplify the task of renaming photos.

Fast Photo Renamer looks kind of like an ordinary Windows folder; it shows photo thumbnails on the right and a folder tree for navigating around your PC on the left. It also shows a large preview of the file's image, which is handy for deciding what to name it, and a set of naming controls. Just inspect the photo, type a file name, and click the next picture. There's also a set of batch controls. You can easily select a half-dozen images, give them a common name, and Fast Photo Renamer applies a number to the end of each file name so you can tell them apart.

Fast Photo Renamer handles the basics pretty well, and I really like the simplicity of renaming photos in a folder-like environment, with a preview of the picture right there on screen. But it doesn't have powerful mix-and-match name fragments like my favorite renaming program, Name Dropper 3.3, which is available for $20.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that Fast Photo Renamer can be slow at times, despite its name; I had to wait 30 seconds for the program to open a folder with 300 pictures.

Want to try it out? Fast Photo Renamer costs $19, and a free trial is available from the vendor's Web site.

Give it a shot, but you might also want to try Name Dropper, which remains my all-time fave.

Q&A: Troubleshoot Your Printer

How can I test my printer to make sure it is working properly?

--Tommy Phifer, Atlanta

If you suspect trouble with your printer, your first step is to make sure that it's plugged in and on and that its data cable is securely attached at both ends.

I don't know how many times I've run into a printer problem only to find that while dusting or retrieving something that fell behind my PC, I knocked my USB connector loose. And keep in mind that if your printer uses a parallel connection, you'll have to do a cold reboot to reliably reestablish communications between the computer and the printer.

Assuming your connections are okay, your next step will be to try printing a test page from Windows. To do that, choose Start, Control Panel, Printers and Faxes (which, if you use XP's Category View, is found in the Printers and Other Hardware category). Right-click your printer's icon and choose Properties. Then click Print Test Page on the General tab.

If nothing happens, there could be one of two problems: Either the printer and Windows are not communicating, or the printer itself is not working. To isolate the specific issue, try generating a test print directly from the printer. You'll probably have to whip out your printer manual (or go to the manufacturer's Web site) to find out what buttons to push. If you start a test print and nothing happens, the problem lies in the printer. But if the test print works fine, then you've got some further troubleshooting to do. You might try moving the printer to a different port--every now and then, one will give out for no externally discernable reason. If all else fails, uninstall and then reinstall your printer driver.

Good luck!

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Mother with Child," by Jessica Ferranti, San Francisco

Jessica says: "I was visiting Vietnam for a month and had my Canon Powershot A510 with me wherever I went. I saw this woman standing on the sidewalk, holding a little girl. They were such a contrast to vehicles that were zipping by."