SAVING DESKTOP PICTURES
On a PC, when the picture has loaded completely, right-click on it (or as explained below, depending on the browser you're using, open it in a new window before right-clicking on it, which you can do on our site by just clicking on the picture), then choose Set as Wallpaper (or Background) from the pop-up menu. You can also choose to save the picture to disk, then display it as described in the next section.
On a PC, if you choose Set as Background (or Wallpaper), the full-size image will normally appear on your desktop, even when it is shown smaller than actual size, as it is on our download pages. However, in some cases, the full-size image must be opened first to avoid setting the reduced image, or a stretched version of it, as wallpaper. (If Stretch is selected in your display control panel, setting the reduced image as wallpaper will fill the screen area, but without the full quality of the full-size image.) For example, to set as wallpaper with Netscape Navigator 4 on a Windows 98 PC (in our experience, Netscape Navigator has always set the reduced image, while Microsoft Internet Explorer has always set the full-size image), first right-click on the picture and choose View Image (or, on our site, you can just click on the picture to open it in a new window), then right-click on the image that appears and choose Set as Wallpaper. Whenever you choose Set as Wallpaper (or Background), also keep in mind that your current wallpaper may be overwritten. If you want to save your current wallpaper, you may need to rename it, or save it in a different location.
On a Mac, when the picture has loaded completely, control-click on it, then choose Download Image (or Save) to Disk from the pop-up menu. If you're using an early version of Safari, when the picture has loaded completely, open it in a new window, which you can do on our site by just clicking on the picture, then select Save As... from Safari's File menu (or press Apple-S) to save the picture to disk. If you control-click on a picture with an early version of Safari, then choose Download Image to Disk, Safari will typically download the picture all over again, or in some cases, download only a server conflict message. For later versions of Safari, when you open a very large file in a new window, it may load over again. To avoid this, control-click on the picture that's shown on the download page (smaller than actual size), then choose "Save Linked File to the Desktop." Once the picture has been saved to disk, the next section describes how you can display it as your desktop background image.
DISPLAYING DESKTOP PICTURES
To display wallpaper on a Windows PC, from the Start menu, select Settings: Control Panel: Display: Background (or in Windows XP, from the Start menu, select Control Panel: Appearance and Themes: Display: Desktop), then choose a picture (right-clicking the desktop, and choosing Properties: Background - or Properties: Desktop in XP - from the pop-up menu, is another way to get to this control panel).
On a Mac (operating systems prior to Mac OS X), from the Apple menu, select Control Panels: Appearance: Desktop, or Control Panels: Desktop Pictures: Picture, then choose a picture (control-clicking the desktop, and choosing Change Desktop Background... from the pop-up menu, is another way to get to the same control panels). You can also drag a folder of desktop pictures onto the virtual desktop in the control panels described above to have your Mac display a different picture, chosen randomly, each time you start up.
For Mac OS X (10.3 and 10.4), go to System Preferences (on the Apple menu) and choose Desktop & Screen Saver (in Personal): Desktop (control-clicking the desktop and choosing Change Desktop Background... from the pop-up menu will also get you there), then click Choose Folder... (in the left panel) and select the folder in which you saved the picture. Click the picture in the right panel to display it as your desktop background. Recent versions of Mac OS X also provide options for displaying different pictures at different times.
For Mac OS X (10.1 and 10.2), from the Apple menu, select System Preferences: Desktop, then choose a picture. For 10.0, from the Finder menu, select Preferences, then choose a picture.
PICTURE QUALITY AND BROWSER DISPLAY
The display quality of desktop pictures and wallpaper depends on several factors, including the quality of the original picture, of course, the compression used to publish it, and the hardware and software used to display it. Most browsers, for example (depending also on your system hardware), don't display the picture at full quality, which often results in banding - distinct bands of color where there should be a smooth gradient (in photos, for example, where smooth sky is prominent). Banding that's visible when viewing pictures in the browser will often disappear when the image is placed on the desktop.
Your browser may also be set to display images using a color profile. (As an example, if Use Color Sync is selected in the Web Content preferences panel of Explorer 5.2 for Mac, Explorer seems to add an sRGB profile to all pictures without an embedded profile.) As a result, pictures may look different (usually better) on the desktop than in your browser.
PICTURES SHOWN SMALLER THAN ACTUAL SIZE
To minimize banding on our download pages (and dithering, which softens banding, but can create unwanted patterns of its own, especially in large areas of dark colors), we've set our desktop pictures to display smaller than actual size in the browser window. Setting them to display smaller also makes it easier to see the whole picture without scrolling, and makes it easier to tell when the picture has finished loading. When saving pictures displayed smaller than actual size, the display setting is ignored, and the full-size picture, which has already been downloaded to the browser's cache, will be saved to disk. (In some cases, when setting as wallpaper on a PC, the display setting will not be ignored, and when using Safari on a Mac, the image already downloaded to your browser's cache may be ignored, as described in SAVING DESKTOP PICTURES, above.)
CHOOSING PICTURE SIZES
For best quality, download desktop pictures and wallpaper in the size that matches your screen resolution. Bigger isn't always better - a 1024 x 768 picture, for example, displayed on a screen set to 800 x 600 will sometimes show signs of distortion (a subtle pattern of lines or jagged edges), due to the software responsible for making the 1024 x 768 image fit into the smaller 800 x 600 screen area. On the other hand, choosing a size smaller than your screen resolution (then stretching it to fit your screen) will not provide as sharp a picture as the size that matches.
MONITOR SETTINGS
For best quality, set your screen to display as many colors as your system will support at the resolution you've chosen. For more about resolution and picture quality, please see Screen Resolution.
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