Tutorial: Create Your Own Multi-Desktop Wallpaper (regardless of monitor size)

Having a dual monitor setup saves me a lot of time with programming, blog posting, and other functions I find myself doing on a daily basis. Being a self-described computer geek, I’m constantly looking for the best way to tweak my computers to add more desktop space, increase my efficiency, and help accomplish my daily tasks faster. At the same time, everything has to look sleek and integrated.

And therein lies the rub.

There’s one glaring problem when you first switch to a multi-desktop setup, and it’s something that isn’t a problem with a single monitor setup: wallpaper. Namely, the only obvious option for setting a desktop wallpaper is to have it repeat on both monitors. This is less than ideal. What I’d really like is to have one desktop wallpaper that spans across both of my monitors (since I have my desktop set up to span, this seems logical enough).

There are two problems I’ll have to overcome to reach my goal:

• I need to find a wallpaper that spans my unique dual-monitor setup (1680×1050 resolution and 1400×1050 respectively)
• I need to figure out how to set a different background on each monitor.

Finding a wallpaper:

There are a few good websites I found that provide multi-desktop wallpapers. Some of these include deviantART, dualscreenwallpaper.com, or simply Googling “dual screen wallpaper” and browsing their Image gallery. Smashing Magazine also has a great article on dual screen wallpapers with a short list of websites at the end.

Anyway, after browsing the offerings on the interwebs I decided to create my own wallpaper using a panoramic photo I’d taken from a backpacking trip. Why? For a few reasons. One, because I didn’t really like any of the wallpapers that were out there. But the second and most important factor that weighed in on my decision is that nobody makes a wallpaper out there to fit a full 3080×1050 resolution.

Let’s begin. You’ll need image editing software for this part. If you don’t have a professional tool like Photoshop, I’d suggest downloading GIMP – a free, open source tool found here. Either should work fine for what we need to do, but because I have Photoshop, I’m going to do my example with it.

First, go to the Menu and select Image Size.

In the Image Size window, change your measurements to pixels, then set the width of your picture to fit the combined pixel width of both monitors[1. If your picture is taller than it is wide, you may need to crop it some] (to find this, right click on Desktop, go to Properties, then the Settings tab and combine the widths of both monitors). Since my image was a panorama, the resizing worked out nicely. However, I still had some space to fill on the top and bottom of my image due to the effects of auto-resizing which changed my image height to 714px. Remember, I want it to be 1050px high. So…

Go to Image>Canvas Size

In the Canvas Size window, I changed the canvas height to 1050px and set my Canvas extension color to black. Now that I’ve got one long image stretching 3080px wide and 1050px high, I need to crop it to fit two screens.

I select the crop tool and set the Width and Height of my crop to 1680 and 1050, respectively[2. The image says this is in inches, but it isn't]. I crop the first half of the image and save it as WPleft. I then go back to my stretched image, change the crop settings to 1400 and 1050, and crop the second half of the image (starting the crop from the right and moving leftwards). I save this as WPright.

We’re ready for the next step.

How to set a different background on each monitor:

We accomplish our second goal rather easily. First, right click on your desktop and select Properties. Navigate to the Desktop tab and click on the Customize Desktop button.

Next, in the new window that opens, click the New button.

Browse to the image that you’d like to set as your off-screen background (I’m not sure whether it really matters which screen you do this for, but I prefer the off-screen). Select OK, OK, Apply.

You’ll have a new window pop up on your desktop that contains your image. Hover your mouse over the upper-most edge of the new window until you see the maximize button in the upper-right hand corner. Drag the window into your off-screen monitor, and click the maximize button.

Finally, right click on your desktop again and go to Arrange Icons By and select Lock Web Items on Desktop.

Now all that’s left is to set your main monitor desktop background by right clicking on the desktop and going to Properties, clicking on the Desktop tab, and Browsing to your main monitor’s image.

Here’s my background if you, like me, have a weird 3080×1050 desktop stretch:

Left Side
Right Side

And the final product (for Christ’s sake, Oliver):

I hope you found this Tutorial helpful!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.