What is DeskPicture?

DeskPicture lets you place and manipulate pictures on the desktop of your Macintosh.

But doesn’t Mac OS X already let me do that?

Well, MacOS X certainly lets you place a single picture on your desktop. That's nice, but that's about the extent of it. DeskPicture lets you do a lot more. DeskPicture let you:

• Place multiple pictures on each screen
• Control the size and placement of each picture
• Make pictures translucent
• Change pictures on a schedule automatically

Using DeskPicture

When launched, DeskPicture displays a window like the one below:

When you run DeskPicture it will look a little different depending on how many screens you have and what desktop pictures you have.

Click on the screen you wish to edit. DeskPicture will then show your current desktop pictures on that screen along with a Details Palette you can use to make changes. If you have more than one screen, the other screens will go black until you leave the editing mode. The Details Palette looks like the following:

There are a number of controls in this palette. Lets look at each one in turn.

Selected Picture

The Selected Picture pop up menu shows you which picture is currently selected. You can also use this control to change your selection.

Hint: If you let the cursor hover over this control, the full path to the picture will be displayed in a tool tips box.

Menus

There are three command menus you can access to perform a variety of editing tasks.

File Menu

The File menu has three commands: New, Replace, and Delete.

The New command brings up a standard file dialog that lets you select a picture to add to your desktop.

The Replace command brings up a standard file dialog that lets you select a picture that will replace the currently selected picture.

The Delete command removes the currently selected picture.

Hint: You can select several files at once by using the SHIFT key.

Scale Menu

The Scale menu lets you change the size of the selected picture by a set amount. The To Full Screen command scales the picture to fill the entire screen. It does not keep the original picture's aspect ratio, if you want to preserve the picture's original aspect ratio, hold down the SHIFT key when selecting this command.

The other commands scale the selected picture to certain percentages of the picture's original size.

Move Menu

The Move menu lets you change the order of your pictures from back to front.

The Forward and Backward commands move the selected picture forward or backward one place in the picture order.

The To Front command moves the picture to be in front of all the other pictures, while the To Back command moves the pictures to be behind all the other pictures.

Opacity

Opacity is the how much a picture lets its background show through (it is also the inverse of translucency). A completely opaque picture (opacity = 100%) completely covers its background. A completely translucent picture (opacity = 0%) is completely lost against its background. Intermediate values show a varying mix of the picture and its background.

Change Picture

The Change Picture option allow you to replace pictures on a regular schedule. You can change them either In Sequence or Randomly. You can also change them at a regular time interval: Daily, Hourly, or at a custom interval entered by you.

Tile Picture To Fill Screen

The Tile Picture To Fill Screen option allows you to use a picture as a tile. That is, as a repeated pattern all across your screen. Typically this option is used with smaller pictures.

Direct Manipulation of Pictures

There are two operations you can perform on a picture directly using the mouse: moving and resizing.

Moving a picture

When you mouse over the selected picture, you can click and drag it to position it anywhere on the screen. The hand cursor is shown to indicate that you can reposition the picture.

Resizing a picture

A selected picture has eight resizing knobs drawn around it. Clicking on one of this knobs and dragging will resize the picture in various ways.

Hint: Hold down the SHIFT key to keep the original aspect ratio when dragging from the corners.

Keyboard Shortcuts

When editing your desktop pictures, there are a number of keyboard shortcuts available to you. These include:

Numbers Keys 1-9

These keys move the selected picture around the screen. Look at the layout of the keypad to understand how each works (5 centers the picture, 9 moves it to the top right, etc.).

TAB and SHIFT-TAB

Pressing the TAB key selects the next picture forward. SHIFT-TAB selects the next picture backward.

SPACE

Pressing the SPACE key hides the palette windows so you can see your pictures unobstructed. Pressing SPACE again, shows the palette windows.

+ and -

Pressing the + key moves the selected picture forward in the picture order. Pressing - key moves the selected picture backward in the picture order. Holding the SHIFT key down along with these keys moves the pictures all the way to the front or to back of the picture order.

= and /

Pressing the = key scales a picture to it's original size. Pressing the / key scales the selected picture to full screen. Pressing the / key along with SHIFT scales it to full screen, while preserving it's original aspect ratio.

DELETE

Pressing the DELETE key removes the currently selected picture.