Desktop wallpaper is an image that fills the home screen of your computer. Home screen is the screen which appears once the computer has started and has no applications open/maximised. People often chose to leave the desktop blank filling only with a colour but also use one of the default backgrounds provided by the operating system. Default background provided by the operating system generally has the Windows logo on it and it compliments the default screen savers. Many people like applying custom desktop wallpaper from personal photographs or wallpapers found online. Every screen has support to few resolutions and wallpaper if of the same resolution as the screen size looks the best. If screen resolution is low and wallpapers if of high resolution then wallpaper will not fit the screen, and if the wallpaper is of low resolution and screen is on high then the wallpaper will appear blocky. In this article we will describe various ways to apply a wallpaper in Windows 7.

Where are the Wallpaper settings?

Wallpaper is a part of the desktop so in all the versions of Windows the quick way to access the wallpaper settings window is by right clicking on the desktop and selecting “Desktop”(in older versions) or “ Personalize”(in Vista and Windows 7)

Follow the following steps in Windows 7:

1.             From Desktop

  • Right Click the desktop
  • Select “Personalise” in the menu
  • Select “Desktop Background”

2.             From Control Panel

  • Open Control Panel
  • Open “Personalise”
  • Select “Desktop Background”

Options in Desktop Background Window

In the Desktop Background Window in Windows 7 the first option is for selecting the Picture location. By default the location is set to “Windows Wallpapers” and this displays the default Wallpapers bundled in Windows 7. Other default locations available is “Pictures”(Location to your \Pictures folder”, “Sample Pictures”(Location to your \Pictures\Sample Pictures folder), and “Public Pictures”(Location to your \Public\Pictures folder). You can even click on Browse button and go to any folder of your choice for getting the pictures saved in that folder displayed in the Desktop Background Window.

The other option is “How Should the Picture be positioned?”. It has three options:

1.             Fit To Screen

This makes the picture to fit on the screen regardless of the picture size. If picture was large then it will shrink and if it was small then it gets stretched.

2.             Tile

This displays the picture as numerous tiles. The number and size of tile would depend upon the size of the picture. If picture is small then you will get many tiles laid side by side.

3.             Center

This displays picture at the center of the screen. Again it suits to images which are smaller than the screen size. If a picture is larger then only the center part of the picture would be visible and rest will get out of frame.

How to Change a picture?

Changing a picture is very simple if you know how the positioning works. To change a picture from Desktop Background Window follow the following steps:

1.             Select the Picture you want to apply

2.             Select the correct positioning

3.             Exit out of the Window

To change the picture from Explorer

1.             Right click on the picture icon

2.             Select “Set as Desktop Background” from the context menu

If you wish to download some new wallpaper then visit the following link: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize?T1=backgrounds