Desktops and Screensavers in Vista

Discover how to Use your own pictures as a Desktop and Screensaver in Windows Vist

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 You might have seen on someone else's computer that they had personalized photographs or pictures on their desktop as well as their screensaver.  These pictures are commonly of their friends, family, and children that they can look at throughout the day at home or at work.  If you would like to do the same thing in Windows Vista, this is not complicated at all.  Following a few simple steps will allow you to add your own pictures as a desktop and screensaver in Windows Vista.

Before you get started, you have to make sure the pictures that you want are on the hard drive.  If they are on another computer, camera, or phone, you need to get them to the machine that you would like to use the pictures on so that you can select them in the various applications that you are going to be using.

Using your own pictures on the desktop is really simple on Windows Vista.  Whenever you click the right mouse button on any empty space on the desktop, you will get a menu that pops up.  On the very bottom on this menu is the Personalize feature that you should click.

This opens up a box that has a few options.  The one that you want to select is the Desktop Background.  This will open available backgrounds that you currently have.  You can use the browse tool to locate where your pictures are on your hard drive so that you can use them as your background on the desktop.  Once this is done, you have the option of letting the image stretch to fill the screen, tiling the image throughout the screen, or centering it without stretching it at all.  Play with the settings until you find the one that looks best for you.

To change the screensaver, you can go through the same steps right click on the desktop and clicking Personalize then selecting screensaver.  You can also get there through the Start button, then selecting Control Panel, hitting Appearance and Settings, and clicking on Change screensaver.

This opens a window with a drop down box that you have a variety of options to use.  The one that you want is Photos.  This opens a settings windows where you can use pictures from your Photo Gallery or use pictures from a certain folder.  It's easiest to take the pictures that you want to use and put them in the same folder to be used on the screensaver.  Clicking save will keep these settings.

Once you have done these tasks once, you should find it fairly easy to use your own pictures on the desktop and screensaver in Windows Vista.