Vista and Backgrounds

[Stg-Flame]

I am trying to set a background that is one size larger than the resolution I am running my desktop at. The problem is, no matter what I set the picture to in the Display Properties, Vista resizes the picture down to fit my desktop rather than centering it - allowing a little bit of the picture on each side to stretch past the boarders of my monitor.

I had no problem doing this on XP, but Vista is a royal pain in the ass when it comes to convenience. Is there any way to place a 1920X1200 picture and have it centered (as described above) on a 1680X1050 desktop? The distortion coming from the picture being resized gives me a headache and it just looks horrible.

 

[lxskllr]

Crop it in Paint.

 

[lxskllr]

Checking center as the option doesn't center it?

 

[Stg-Flame]

No, it centers it, but it still shrinks it. I shouldn't have to resort to cropping every picture I want to use as a background just because Vista does not know how to place an image correctly.

 

[lxskllr]

I think my Vista laptop used to auto-crop large images. I can't remember, and I gave that machine to my mother. I don't have any images that are bigger than my desktop rig.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I could supply you with a few as I have quite a collection of high-resolution images. Unless your monitor is larger than a 28", I think I could find a picture that would exceed your limit. Although, I can't remember if photobucket allows for pictures larger than 1MB and almost all of my backgrounds are larger than that.

 

[lxskllr]

Go ahead and put one up if you can. I'll give it a shot :^)

 

[Stg-Flame]

What's your resolution?

 

[lxskllr]

1920*1200

 

[Stg-Flame]

http://i101.photobucket.com/al...n666/1213947177586.jpg

Perfect example as it used to be my XP background, but since Vista shrinks it, I no longer use it.

 

[lxskllr]

This is right isn't it?

http://img17.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bigdesk.jpg

 

[Stg-Flame]

No, it's been sized down again. The words should span almost across your entire desktop. All of my other images larger than your desktop will be sized down to 1MB by Photobucket. Let me try imageshack and find a ridiculous-sized picture for you to retry. Something with an actual graphic to see the resizing and pixelation.

Edit: If it comes down to it, I have a few dual-screen pictures for when I use my other monitor. 3200X1200 should show if it is being resized on your rig.

 

[lxskllr]

I see what you're saying now. I can view it full sized, but when setting it as a background it gets shrunk down :^/

 

[Stg-Flame]

Imageshack is resizing them to fit a size limit. My others are roughly 4+MB and around 6000+ X 3000+ in resolution. Since you see the resizing I won't need to try and upload any others unless you want a better reference. The only problem is that I can only think of one site that allows for easy uploading of high-resolution pictures and I would rather not link to that site.

Anyways, any idea how to fix this?

 

[lxskllr]

I'll look around, but nothing immediately jumped out at me :^/

 

[Stg-Flame]

Thanks for the help. I will check back here in a few hours when I get back from town.

 

[lxskllr]

So far, it looks like the option you want is only available in Ultimate. I'll keep looking for a hack, but you may be SOL :^(

 

[dguy6789]

I had this problem a while back myself and could not solve it. I ended up using Photoshop to get my background the way I wanted with Vista.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Are you switching and managing your background settings in Control Panel/Personalization/Desktop Background? If not, a backed up version of the image, which will be scaled/cropped in this situation, is saved in shell:AppData\Microsoft folder. The reason you fit, center, stretch, etc. have no effect is that the desktop background is actually a backed up file cropped to your desktop resolution.

Windows Photo Gallery/Photo View and Windows Live Photo Gallery will save cropped versions of desktop backgrounds in these folders, respectively ordered:
shell:Appdata\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery
shell:Appdata\Microsoft\Windows Live Photo Gallery

I believe only the Control Panel method of changing backgrounds is the only one dependent on havin the actual file present and unchanged. I hope this helps you.

 

[Snapster]

Same issue with dual monitor backgrounds, I select tile and it fits fine now.

 

[heymrdj]

See this is a conflict of features. I want mine to auto size, not make it so I can't see part of the image. *That* bugs the shit out of me lol.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
Are you switching and managing your background settings in Control Panel/Personalization/Desktop Background? If not, a backed up version of the image, which will be scaled/cropped in this situation, is saved in shell:AppData\Microsoft folder. The reason you fit, center, stretch, etc. have no effect is that the desktop background is actually a backed up file cropped to your desktop resolution.

Windows Photo Gallery/Photo View and Windows Live Photo Gallery will save cropped versions of desktop backgrounds in these folders, respectively ordered:
shell:Appdata\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery
shell:Appdata\Microsoft\Windows Live Photo Gallery

I believe only the Control Panel method of changing backgrounds is the only one dependent on havin the actual file present and unchanged. I hope this helps you.

Holy hell it actually worked. Thanks a lot!

Every time I tried going through the Photo View and selecting it to set it as my background, it would shrink it. I took another look at it, and the file-path was saved elsewhere and not where the picture actually is saved.

Thanks again. Now I can use my old backgrounds without having them distorted.