Desktop Pictures XII: Northwest

ATPM’s assistant webmaster, Lee Bennett, provided this collection of new desktop pictures. The images are of various terrain Lee photographed during his autumn 1999 vacation through the northwest states and British Columbia, Canada. Additional images at 1024 x 768 resolution will be made available in future months. All the photos from the trip can now be viewed in his online photo album.

This month’s pictures feature the San Bernadino Mountains in southern California (the first stop prior to touring the northwest); two shots taken along Interstate 90 near Anaconda, Montana, approaching a snowstorm; Mount Rainier in Washington State, taken from a ferry on the Puget Sound; the Pike Place Public Market in downtown Seattle, Washington; and several images taken at the Mount St. Helens National Park in Washington state.

All photos were taken with a Canon AE-1 using a 35–200mm zoom lens and Kodak Gold 200ASA 35mm film. Digitizing was performed on Kodak Picture CDs at the time of film processing. Resampling and retouching was performed with Adobe Photoshop 4.01 for Macintosh.

You can get these images from the download page. Prior collections of desktop pictures are available there.

If you haven’t seen the older parts of the series, they are: Yellowstone National Park, Drops, Toronto, Niagara Falls, Monaco, Montréal, Bahamas, Clouds, Aerial, Made with Macs, Landscapes, Northwest.

Placing Desktop Pictures

Mac OS 8.5 and Newer Go to the “Appearance” control panel. Click on the “Desktop” tab at the top of the window. Press the “Place Picture...” button in the bottom right corner, then select the desired image. By default, it will show you the images in the “Desktop Pictures” subfolder of your “Appearance” folder in the System Folder, however you can select images from anywhere on your hard disk.

After you select the desired image file and press “Choose,” a preview will appear in the Appearance window. The “Position Automatically” selection is usually fine. You can play with the settings to see if you like the others better. You will see the result in the little preview screen.

If you are satisfied with the selection, click on “Set Desktop” in the lower right corner of the window. That’s it! Should you ever want to get rid of it, just go to the desktop settings again and press “Remove Picture.”

Mac OS 8.0 and 8.1 Go to the “Desktop Patterns” control panel. Click on “Desktop Pictures” in the list on the left of the window, and follow steps similar to the ones above.

Random Desktop Pictures If you drag a folder of pictures onto the miniature desktop in the Appearance or Desktop Pictures control panel, your Mac will choose one from the folder at random when it starts up.

DeskPicture An alternative to Mac OS’s Appearance control panel is Pierce Software’s DeskPicture, reviewed in issue 5.10 and available for download.

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