Customizing Your Mac: Wallpaper Fun

David Appleyard — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:00:01 +0000

The desktop wallpaper on your Mac is something that you may not pay a great deal of attention to. If so, you might be missing out on a great way to create a personal look and feel for your computer, revel in stunning photography, or even re-create the feeling of being somewhere thousands of miles away from your desk.

In this post on customizing your Mac I’ll be looking at a some sources of beautiful wallpaper, investigating a few of the effects and features pre-built into OS X, and showcasing two pieces of software for revolutionizing your desktop.

Sources of Beautiful Wallpaper

The internet is littered with websites offering ‘free wallpaper’ for your computer. Unfortunately the majority of such sites are fairly dire. The following collection of sites stand head and shoulders above the rest and, while I’m bound to miss a few, provide a great starting point for inspiration. In no particular order:

Interface Lift
Pixel Girl Presents
Veer Wallpapers
Mandolux – Great for multiple monitor setups
Mantia Desktops
Vladstudio

Wallpaper Support in OS X

Built into OS X is a well rounded range of wallpaper settings. The included backgrounds are well designed, in the categories of Nature, Plants, Black & White, Abstract etc — they make an excellent starting collection of wallpapers. The ‘Change picture every X minutes’ setting makes it easy to have a regularly updated background and keeps your Mac looking fresh. This can be done at a set interval, every time your computer wakes from sleep, or when you log in. Once you have built up a collection you’re proud of from the aforemetioned sources, turning this option on can be a great way to remember older wallpapers you’d forgotten about.

Wallpaper Applications

Serene Saver – This creates a cross between a regular wallpaper and a screen saver, providing some animation on your desktop. Over 30 different video animations are bundled with the application, and it is built to ensure that strain is not placed on performance. At $50 it is a very expensive way to customize your desktop, but has a trial available to let you decide whether it suits you.

Backlight – A free application which sits in your menu bar, allowing you to run any screen saver as a desktop background. This opens up a wide range of possibilities, as you aren’t limited to in-built effects (any screensaver can be used). Transparency can be altered to allow your normal background image to show through. This reduces the impact of the effect, making it more subtle and usable. This is a screenshot of my ‘Flurry’ desktop:

Share Your Sources

I’d love to hear where you go for wallpaper inspiration, or if you use any other interesting applications for beautifying your desktop. Please share!

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iPhone 101: Syncing Photos & Wallpapers to Your iPhone/iPod touch

Brandon Eley — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:00:04 +0000

Getting photos or wallpapers to your iPhone/iPod touch isn’t initially very obvious, but it’s actually quite easy. Once you have the photos or wallpapers you want, you can either use a software program to organize them (such as Aperture or iPhoto) or organize them yourself into folders and sub-folders.

Syncing Photos to Your iPhone

You can sync photos via iTunes to your iPhone from your iPhoto or Aperture libraries, your Pictures folder, or from any folder you select.

Open iTunes and plug in your iPhone.
Once your iPhone is mounted and you see the iPhone icon in the “Devices” list, click on your phone’s name.
Click the tab labeled “Photos”
Check the checkbox labeled “Sync photos from: “
Select the source of your photos.
Click the “Apply” button to sync the photos to your iPhone or iPod touch

If you are using iPhoto or Aperture, I highly recommend making albums with only the photos you’d like to sync to your iPhone. Syncing your entire photo library is not only time consuming, but it could also take up a substantial amount of disk space on your iPhone.

I created an album titled “iPhone Wallpapers” specifically for my wallpapers. It helps me keep them separate from all my other galleries and makes changing my wallpaper a snap.

Setting Your iPhone Wallpaper

Once you have the photos synced to your iPhone or iPod touch, setting your wallpaper is a breeze.

Open the Photos application
Browse to the photo you’d like to set as your wallpaper
With the photo selected and enlarged, click it once to bring up the menu
Click the arrow icon in the bottom-left to bring up the action menu
Click “Use As Wallpaper”
Position/resize as required
Click “Set Wallpaper”

See the photo gallery below for a visual step-by-step for setting your iPhone wallaper.