How can I set a full picture as my wallpaper?

[MrJoey]

I want to set a picture of my girlfriend as my wallpaper, but when I tried I had to crop the photo, but it wouldn't let me crop the whole thing. So how can I set the whole image?

 

[KENNECTED]

Hi and welcome. Help us, help you by telling us the device your using? Your profile says Kyocera Echo, but not sure if that is the device your using for this process.

IIRC, when you chose Set As, that process should allow you to crop/select and area to be used as wallpaper.

 

[UssjTrunks]

Your screen resolution is different from the resolution of the picture. It won't let you select the whole thing because if it did, the picture would look stretched.

 

[chevanlol360]

i really hate how it does that

 

[UssjTrunks]

i really hate how it does that

I don't see the problem. It makes sure that your wallpapers don't turn out stretched. Maybe they can add an option to turn it off, but I don't see why you would want to.

 

[Saltine713]

If you install Flickie Wallpapers HD, it doesn't crop the photo at all. Simply hold down the photo in your phone's gallery, and click the lowest "SET AS" option and it will set it for you.

 

[Brucew0617]

It will cut some edge off, and use as wallpaper, that's for android

 

[adaaaam]

I don't see the problem. It makes sure that your wallpapers don't turn out stretched. Maybe they can add an option to turn it off, but I don't see why you would want to.

It ensures no stretching for wallpaper scrolling, which requires s wide resolution. But when scrolling is disabled, a portrait resolution is suffice, yet android 2.x still requires cropping to landscape resolution. So a solution is for the op is to disable scrolling, use photoshop and widen your gfs portraits canvas by 2x with black background and image centered, and use that instead as the wallpaper. Her whole picture will fit perfectly.. Android will cut off the black sides. I know its a lot of work but you love her

 

[mikeytwoshoes]

so when i first got my rezound i could set this complete image of my girlfriend as my wallpaper, now its only letting me choose half. If they only allow you to crop a certain amount of the photo, its going to stretch it out way more than if you were able to just choose the whole picture. This happened after i downloaded an app and now its completely messed up... well not really, it just upsets me i cant have a clear picture as my backround anymore...ugh

 

[mikeytwoshoes]

so its doing the same thing to me...and what people are telling you doesnt make sense...their minds go straight to resolution, well the resolution would be better if you could choose the whole picture and it wouldnt be stretch as much if you could either... it let me before and i downloaded an app and now it wont let me, how do I fix this?

 

[adaaaam]

For optimal clarity wallpapers, the image's height should be the height of your screen and width 2X that of the width. Examples:

480 x 800 screens use 960 x 800 images
540 x 960 qHD screens use 1080 x 960 images
720 x 1280 HD screens use 1440 x 1280 images

Any resolution smaller will result in stretched bluriness. Any resolution higher will not result in clearer images. When scrolling is disabled, 25% of the left border and 25% of the right borders are trimmed off. If you select a picture that is not a ratio of the above resolutions, it will first trim the top and bottom borders of the image first (if too tall), and then continue to trim the sides, resulting in super bluriness and loss of image data.

So the best way to prepare an image for your phone's wallpaper with scrolling disabled is to create a new Photoshop document whose canvas size is one of the above listed resolutions, paste the image onto the canvas, and stretch or shrink the layer until the top and bottom edges touch the edges of the canvas, and save the image. When Android selects it as a wallpaper, it will trim blank canvas area and your portrait will fit beautifully, with no bluriness.

 

[EM1336]

What an annoying "feature" of Android. I struggled with this for hours with an LG G2, resolution 1080 width x 1920 height. (Thank you adaaaam for finally explaining in clear English how to set the image dimensions.) What worked for me was using ES File Explorer to choose the 1080 x 1920 JPEG, and choosing the Gallery tool to set the image as the single-pane wallpaper. For some reason, the Photos tool always assumes you are using three panes, so it always tries to crop the image into the more-squarish 1.125 shape for three panes. The Gallery tool allows you to select either single pane (more rectangular 0.5625), or three panes (more squarish 1.125).

Instructions for 1080 x 1920 image on LG G2:
Open ES Explorer.
Go to Pictures folder and select your photo.
Click the three white buttons in the upper corner of the screen.
Choose Set as...
Choose Home screen wallpaper.
Complete action using "Crop picture" (Gallery icon).
Select single pane.

Let's say we have an image that is 1080 width x 1920 height, and we turn it on its side and squeeze it into the display. The new dimensions are 1920 width x 1080 height. If you squeezed this into the display, the image would look highly skewed, because the height would need to shrink to 607.5 . (1080 is to 1920 as x is to 1080. Solve for x.) To lessen the effect, you could resize the image for a three-pane setup, using dimensions 1215 x 1080, but the image would still look terribly smushed.

What if you have an approximately 16:9 (1.777777 aspect ratio) image that you want to rotate and turn into wallpaper? so it is not exactly 1080 width x 1920 height when rotated? If it is close, you can stretch the image and you probably won't notice that it is stretched. Using ACDSee as an example:

Open the image in ACDSee.
Right-click, click on Modify, click on Resize.
Uncheck Preserve Aspect Ratio.
Change the dimensions so that the aspect ratio becomes as close as possible to 0.5625 (this is 1080/1920, the inverse of 1.777777).
Click Done, hit the space bar, click Save, and Esc to exit.
This stretched image will fit one screen nearly perfectly.

Alternatively, if the image is more squarish in shape after rotating, change the dimensions so that the aspect ratio is as close as possible to 1.125 (this is 2160/1920), and use the image in a three-pane setup.

You can add white or black borders to either side of a single-pane image for use with a three-pane setup, but then two of your displays will contain part emptiness and part image, which looks silly. (At least, that's what happened when I tried.) If you still want to try, here is an example of how:

Open the image in MS Paint.
Click on the View tab and zoom out until you can see the entire image.
Drag the slider at the edge of the image, creating a blank white border, until the total dimensions are 2160 x 1080.
Click on the Home tab.
Click on the Select (dashed rectangle) tool.
Select the image as best as you can, and drag it rightwards until it is centered with the two borders on either side.
Use the paint bucket tool to change the two white border areas to pitch black, if you'd prefer.
Click File - Save as, and save as a JPEG, (if you care about your image, choose JPEG compression = highest quality), and exit.

To create perfect wallpaper images, simply adhere to 0.5625 aspect ratio for single pane, or 1.125 aspect ratio for three panes. You could, for example, open a gigantic image in MS Paint, use the Select (dashed rectangle) tool, and select the most desirable subset of the image, such that the pixels are a rectangle that is 0.5625 aspect ratio (any exact multiple of 9 x 16).


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Here is a detailed example of how I turned a gigantic 8192 x 4096 TIFF satellite map of the Earth into a gorgeous wallpaper for my LG G2.

Best fit for 8192 x 4096 would be single pane 1080 x 1920.
Therefore, the first task that I should do is to rotate the image: ACDSee, right-click, Modify, Rotate / Flip, rotate either left or right 90 degrees, hit Start rotate button.
Resize so that both dimensions fit within 1080 x 1920: ACDSee, right-click, Modify, Resize, make sure checkbox is checked in "Preserve Aspect Ratio", and change height to 1920. The width changes to 960. Click Done, hit the space bar, click Save, and Esc to exit.
Now the image is 960 x 1920. Ideally, the image should be 1080 x 1920.
When set as the wallpaper, Android cuts off part of the 1920 height to preserve the 1080 x 1920 aspect ratio:

x/960 = 1920/1080.
x = 960 * 1920/1080 = about 1706.667. About 213 pixels cut off.

To see the entire image (slightly stretched): ACDSee, right-click, Modify, Resize, make sure the checkbox is unchecked in "Preserve Aspect Ratio", and change the width to 1080. This will stretch the image slightly.
Click Done, hit the space bar, click Save As, save as a JPEG file (set for highest-quality compression), and exit.
Then, copy the JPEG to the phone, open ES Explorer, select the photo, Set as wallpaper, and use the Gallery tool to select single pane.