There are heaps of beautiful wallpaper designs available on the
web, many of them are the work of some very clever and
imaginative digital artists.
But when it comes to photo wallpaper, even though the choice is
still huge, the vast majority of images cover your desktop with
a beautiful image, only for you to then go and clutter up the
image with all your desktop icons.
If, like me you frequently drop useful shortcuts on the desktop
whilst you are surfing, or you like to organise your work space
with all your favourite and most often used program icons easily
to hand, you are likely to end up with the effect of that
stunning landscape photo completely destroyed with a messy
colection of shortcuts which you can't see very well because
they are lost against the backgrond image. Sounds familiar?
Well, I'm going to show you how you can overcome this problem by
making your own customized desktop wallpaper, that will give you
both a pretty image to grace your computer, as well as areas
where you can neatly keep your icons together, easily visible
and identifiable.
First of all you will need two things: your favourite (digital
or scanned) photo, and some sort of photo editing software.
Start your photo editing program and locate and open your chosen
photograph file. What size (in pixels) is the image? Look at the
file info, or the status bar, or image heading, of your editing
program to find this. For the purpose of this excercise we'll
assume that your PC desktop is set at a resolution (screen size)
of 1024 x 768, which is probably the most common choice at the
moment. (To change the size of your desktop/screen resolution:
right click on your desktop - choose properties - then the
"settings" tab, which will present you with the available size
choices for your monitor).
So, with a screen size of 1024 x 768 pixels, alter the
dimensions of your image to exactly match these dimensions.
Warning: don't change both height and width, or you may end up
with a distorted image unless the original size is proportionate
to 1024 x 768. What you should do is to alter the image width,
OR, the height, until you have an image which is the same on one
edge, and either the same, or larger on the other edge. Then
using the crop tool in your image editor, carefully select
enough of the image to match exactly 1024 x 768 pixels.
OK. So now you have your basic background image. Here's the
important part: Look at your chosen image and decide which area,
or areas, are the least important visually. It may be that the
bottom of the image doesn't contain any important detail, or
vital part of the scene. Or maybe a part of one side, or the
other could be sacrificed without spoiling the overall impact?
Keep in mind that you're not going to completely lose this part
of the image - just "ghost" it. What this entails is lowering
the image contrast, while raising the brightness, a little at a
time until you have a ghosted image in which you can still see
the picture but more "dimly" than before. These "ghosted" panels
are where you are going to place your icons, so that they stand
out much better than before. With careful choice of image and
where you place the "ghosted" panels, you can create a very
attractive and functional desktop wallpaper.
Back to the actual process: use the selection tool to create a
panel, or indeed more than one, at the part(s) of the image you
have chosen to "ghost". Now, for each panel at a time, use the
contrast and brightness tools, as described above, to alter just
the selected area(s). When you are satisfied with the degree of
ghosting, you can further enhance your design by adding an
outline to the panel, and/or a drop shadow.
When you are happy with the overall design. Save the image as a
JPEG file with a bit of compression but not too much if you want
to keep the quality reasonably high (a quality setting of about
85%, or level 10 in Photoshop, will do).
Now you are ready to add this wallpaper to your PC's library of
wallpapers: to do this right click on your desktop -> choose
properties -> then the "Desktop" tab -> then click "Browse" and
locate the file you just saved, and finally click OK. Your
editing software may have a command for setting the image as
your wallpaper more quickly, but keep in mind you might have
trouble finding it again if you subsequently change to a
different wallpaper.
With your new design loaded on your desktop, you now have to
arrange your icons within the panel(s) you made. To make this
easier, what I do is to right-click the desktop and then ->
"arrange icons by"-> "align to grid" first, then drag and drop
the icons to approximately where you want them, leaving "align
to grid" to tidy up your rows and columns, then, if your
collection of icons doesn't quite align with the panel(s),
deselect "align to grid", use the mouse pointer to select a box
all around the icons you want to move, then drag the whole tidy
pile to where you want them to sit.
