Desktop Wallpapers



Posted: Monday, March 13, 2006

by Kent Pinkerton

Wallpaper is the backdrop image against which menus, icons, and other elements are displayed on your computer desktop. Usually used in Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Mac OS, Linux and other operating systems, a wallpaper image can be in a JPEG or a GIF file format. Operating systems provide a number of pre-installed wallpaper images, but the user can ignore them and choose third-party wallpaper instead.

A wallpaper image can be of three types: centered, stretched or tiled. A centered image occupies the middle of the desktop, with a solid color on all sides of it. If the image is stretched, it means it is stretched to cover the entire desktop. As some images are likely to be distorted due to stretching, only a certain number of images can be included in this category. A tiled image is placed on the desktop similar to how tiles are arranged on a tiled floor. Patterns, not photos, normally feature in tiling, because a pattern is one square image that repeats itself across and down the desktop, thereby forming one single image.

Different people like different wallpaper styles using photographs, drawings, 3D renderings or abstract patterns with complex gradients. It is convenient to have plain areas so that icons are clearly visible on the desktop. The most common categories usually include scenery, models and celebrities, cars, holiday photos, abstract art, movies or pets.

In some operating environments, a number of different wallpapers are "rotated" to display different wallpapers at different times. Using Internet connections and graphics calculations, some programs can change the wallpaper with real data, such as the latest cloud or weather map, or different events. There are a number of sites from where you can download beautiful wallpapers for free.

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