USE YOUR DESKTOP PICTURE FOR PR AND PROMOTION
by D'Lynn Waldron, PhD. August 2000 copyright

If you have clients who see your monitor, you may be overlooking a very valuable piece of real estate that can be used for PR and promotion.

I keep a number of desktop pictures in the "Additional Pictures" folder (see below) and change them on the fly to suit my clients.

For just good feelings I have scenics that the various clients like.

For PR I have examples of work I have done for the client.

For Promotion I have examples of the kind of work I would like to sell to the client.

Some images fill the entire screen, some are framed with a plain or textured background.

CREATING A DESKTOP PICTURE FOR THE MACINTOSH

To create a desktop picture file, use a program like Photoshop to crop and size the image to the exact pixel dimensions of your screen. Allow for the menu bar at the top with an unimportant area of the image or a border on the top.

Save the image as an LZW (losslessly compressed) Tiff to avoid the artifacts created by jpeg lossy compression, and never rejepeg a jpeg, resave it as a tiff. However, if you have a prepared jpeg it can be put in the folder

PUTTING A PICTURE IN THE FILE

Drop a jpeg or Tiff file into folder marked "Additional Desktop Pictures" which is in the System Folder, in the subfolder "Control Panels". These are the pictures that can be selected with the Control Panel which you can access under the Apple.

PUTTING A PICTURE ON YOUR DESKTOP

Go to the finder and under the Apple and go to "Control Panels" and open "Appearance", then open the tab "Desktop".

Under the tab "Desktop", click on "Remove Picture" then click on "Place Picture" and select the one you want from the list that will come up of the pictures that are in the "Additional Desktop Pictures" folder.

BE SURE TO SET THE OPTION TO "CENTER ON SCREEN" BECAUSE THE DEFAULT
"PROPORTIONAL" WILL DISTORT THE IMAGE TO THE ASPECT RATIO (SHAPE) OF THE SCREEN, AND/OR COMPRESS IT CREATING ARTIFACTS, IF IT IS NOT IN THE EXACT PIXEL DIMENSIONS OF THE SCREEN AS SET IN "MONITORS".

CHANGING PICTURES

Desktop pictures can be changed on the fly, but expect to wait up to a minute for the control panel to open.