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Make your own wallpapers for the DX

bemaitea

Member
Jul 28, 2010
54
8
I know there are plenty of Apps that can do this for you, but I enjoy putting my own content on the phones without having to go through a 3rd party, no offense to those Flickie devs :D

But I use to use this method for my iPhone 3G and it's even easier to accomplish on your DX.

The only requirement is you must have photo editing software to do this effectively. Something like Photoshop or GIMP (which is a free alternative). Both PS and GIMP work in a very similar way, so the steps should be the same, but I'll be talking from a PS perspective.

1. Open PS and start a new image with the dimensions 960x854 and a color mode of RGB 8-bit.

2. Save these settings as a preset called "Droid X Wallpaper" or simply save the PSD file as "template.psd" and load that up everytime.

3. Search the vast ocean of images on the internet or use your own and place it in the template we've just created. Resize the image so it fits the entire template, but do try to maintain the dimensions. The last thing you want is a squashed picture as your background on such a beautiful device!

4. Now click save-as and save your new wallpaper as a .png file somewhere. I find png's offer the best clarity and look really crisp on the DX as opposed to JPEGs. But this also is very dependent on the original image and how much degredation was suffered during the resizing!

5. Plug your DX into your computer and switch it to the USB mode so you can access the SD card. On the main directory create a new folder and call this "Wallpapers". Place all your created wallpapers here.

6. Eject the SD card go into your DX. In your Gallery app, you now should see your newly created Wallpapers folder unter the title...well, folders!

7. Open the folder in Gallery, find the picture you want as your wallpaper, long press the picture until a menu pops up and choose "set as" and then select wallpaper. Resize the box so it fits the ENTIRE picture and save.

8. Enjoy the fruits of your labor and drink plenty of Tang. :cool:


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The Super-Easy MS Paint method:

1. Open MS Paint, resize canvas to 960x854 pixels

2. Copy paste image into canvas, resize copied image to fit inside canvas while maintaining aspect ratio

3. Save as png and upload to phone as previously described.

4. Drink more tang.
 
I've never had a problem just finding an image online, saving it to my sd card and setting it as my wallpaper using the options on the phone. What exactly is the benefit of all this extra work?

No problems there either, works well.

But the main point for this was to make optimized wallpapers. So in other words, the right dimensions and format. No point in saving a 3MB image for a wallpaper that only needs at most 1MB.

Or perhaps the more appropriate reason is I need to satiate the OCD demon within me :D

It's really not much more work to get perfect wallpapers though. Just need to set up the template once and just load it every time.
 
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No problems there either, works well.

But the main point for this was to make optimized wallpapers. So in other words, the right dimensions and format. No point in saving a 3MB image for a wallpaper that only needs at most 1MB.

Or perhaps the more appropriate reason is I need to satiate the OCD demon within me :D

It's really not much more work to get perfect wallpapers though. Just need to set up the template once and just load it every time.

LOL I feel ya on the OCD. I'm the same way with my icons/widgets on my homescreens
 
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LOL I feel ya on the OCD. I'm the same way with my icons/widgets on my homescreens

Yeah...I'm finding excuses to stick with motoblur, but once I jump to LP I'm afraid I will have at least a few sleepless nights perfecting the icons and widgets lol.

the same thing can also be accomplished with the basic "paint" on windows computers...

Exactly what I was thinking while taking a coffee break this morning!

I'm ammending the original post now...
 
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Actually, I noticed that when I took desktop wallpapers that were 1920x1200 and just put them on my original Droid and sized them the way I wanted with that they were noticeably more jagged than the native resolution (same as DX).

I now edit any wallpaper I want to use so it is 960x854.
 
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I've never had a problem just finding an image online, saving it to my sd card and setting it as my wallpaper using the options on the phone. What exactly is the benefit of all this extra work?

Yeah this is pretty much what I do now. After seeing how crappy all of these background apps are for searching or anything like that, I just save any image I find while surfing the net and have a folder saved for just wallpapers. I can see it eventually getting too big, but at this point it's a tiny little nothing in the corner of my file system, and thismethod does a far better job than any app you can find on market (I'm sure paid apps might be better, but why pay).
 
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Hello there! I am new to Android phones, and just bought myself a Droid X. Now, Ive been toying with wallpapers, however when I make an image thats 960x854 and transfer it to my 'Wallpapers' and try to 'set it', it acts like it wants me to re-size it. So, I try to make that 'square' as large as possible, at which point it doesn't quite stretch to fit my image. So, when its 'saved' the image isn't my full image. If I don't touch the square, and just hit 'save' it only shows what was inside said square.

Am I missing something here? Something simple I should have caught?
 
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