Work Desktop Picture Magic

By David Norton 

Tired of the same old desktop picture each time you start your Mac up? Did you know that you can have the desktop picture change at every startup? It's true, and it's easy. There are just five easy (and short!) steps.

1) Open Appearance Control Panel

Click on the Apple Menu in the top-left corner, select Control Panels, and select Appearance. Or, control-click on the Desktop, and select "Change Desktop Background...".

2) Click Desktop Tab

'Nuff said. Once this happens, you'll see something like the following:

3) Drop a folder with your favorite desktop pictures onto the sample screen

All you have to do is take a folder with several of your favorite desktop pictures, and drag it from the finder onto the sample screen. The computer automatically picks one from random and displays it in the sample screen. To make sure it works, drag the folder on several times and watch the sample screen change.

4) Click "Set Desktop"

Click the button in the bottom-right hand corner of the window called "Set Desktop". This will set the picture in the sample screen onto the Desktop, and save the changes.

5) Reboot, reboot, reboot!

Now comes the most time consuming part. Being a Mac user, you won't be content with just leaving it be, so you should restart the computer the several times just to see your new desktop picture action!

Tips 'n' Tricks There are several useful tips you should know before trying this out: The folder containing the desktop pictures must be on the Startup Disk, or a partition of the Startup Disk. You can't set certain patterns to go with certain pictures... so you are either going to have to figure out a good pattern that will go with all your pictures, set the Appearance control panel to fill the pictures to the screen, or modify the pictures to be at a resolution equal to your monitor's resolution. You can find good desktop pictures at Apple iCards (you will need a picture-editing program for these), MacOS Resources, and several other sites around the web. Whenever you see a cool picture you like, just save it to the desktop, and use an image editing program to edit it into the right shape and size.

-David Norton is Senior Editor at MacMilitia.com. He welcomes your tips and how-to suggestions.

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