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Change the Desktop Background
When you first bought your computer, you probably had the computer manufacturer's logo (or similar) showing on your desktop. Most people change this to something more suiting to their personality, usually to one from the free collection of desktop backgrounds pre-installed by Microsoft. You know the ones, they look like this (XP on right, Vista/7 on left):
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Depending upon your system, you will have the opportunity to change the background picture to something else from the (Vista) collection, here are 3 more examples:
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So how do you change the background image? Here's how its done in XP (for Windows Vista/7, click here):
- Right-click an empty area of the desktop and choose 'Properties'.
- When the 'Display Properties' multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the 'Desktop' tab.
If you want to make your desktop a solid color:
- Underneath 'Background' click '(None)'. If you can't click this, see the NOTE below.
- Click on the 'Color' pull-down and choose your desired color. If you don't like the options, click 'Other' and you can choose from a much larger color palette from a 'Color' dialog box.
- I won't discuss all of the options here, but to make it simple, click on a box underneath Custom Colors, pick a color in the big color box, and drag the slider on the right side of the dialog box up to make the custom color lighter, down to make it darker.
- Click 'Add to Custom Colors' and press 'OK'.
Or, if you would like to choose a picture:
- Choose from the various pictures underneath 'Background'. Or, click 'Browse' and find a picture on your hard drive. This can be any picture, whether it's one you've made, one that happens to be on your computer, or one you've downloaded from the Internet.
- If you cannot click on a picture or the 'Browse' button, see the note below.
- If your picture / photo does not fill the entire desktop (you can tell by looking at the preview area near the top of the 'Display Properties' dialog box), click the 'Position' pull-down and choose:
- Center - centers the picture onscreen
- Tiles - creates copies of the picture to fill the screen
- Stretch - stretches the picture so it fills the whole screen
When you are done, click 'OK'.
To change the desktop background in Vista/7:
- Open Desktop Background by clicking the Start button - Control Panel - Appearance and Personalization - Personalization, and then click 'Desktop Background'.
- Click the picture or color you want for your desktop background.
- If the picture you want to use is not in the list of desktop background pictures, click the Picture location down arrow to view other categories, or click Browse to search for the picture on your computer. When you find the picture you want, double-click it. It will become your desktop background and appear in the list of desktop backgrounds.
- Under How should the picture be positioned, choose to have the picture fit the screen, tile, or be centered on the screen, and then click 'OK'.
- If you choose to have a centered picture as your desktop background, you can also have a color background to frame your picture. Under How should the picture be positioned, click Change background color, click a color, and then click 'OK'.
With either Windows XP, Vista and 7, you can make any picture stored on your computer (or a picture you are currently viewing) your desktop background by right-clicking the picture, and then clicking 'Set as Desktop Background'.
By the way...
We have a small collection of desktop backgrounds for you to freely download. To view them, please click here (new window).
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