To divert from Apple's preselected style, Macs allow you to set any image of your choice as a Mac desktop wallpaper. Simply find the image anywhere on your Mac, right-click on it, and select Set Desktop Picture from the menu. In case your image is in the Photos app, open it up, click on the share icon, and choose the Set Desktop Picture. Jun 27, 2020 This one's pretty self-explanatory: choosing this option will make the image your desktop background or wallpaper. MacOS will automatically use the 'Scale Image' setting to make the image fill your Mac's entire screen, even if the image isn't the correct aspect ratio (i.e. The proportions of height and width of an image).
Power users like to tweak their Mac OS X Desktops just so, with that menu color, this background, and those applications in the Dock. Non-computer types just can't understand the importance of the proper arrangement of your virtual workplace: When things are familiar and customized to your needs, you're more productive, and things get done faster. In fact, if you've set up multiple users on your computer under Mac OS X, the Big X automatically keeps track of each user's Desktop and restores it when that person logs in. (For example, when you use the Mac, you get that background photo of Farrah Fawcett from the '70s while your daughter gets Avril Lavigne.) You can produce a Desktop that's uniquely your own.
You may be wondering whether you really need a custom background. That depends completely on your personal tastes, but most computer owners do change their background when presented with the opportunity. Favorite backgrounds usually include
- Humorous cartoons and photos that can bring a smile to your face (even during the worst workday)
- Scenic beauty
- Photos of family and friends (or the latest Hollywood heartthrob)
- The company logo (not sure it does much for morale, but it does impress the boss)
If you do decide to spruce up your background, you have three choices: You can select one of the default Mac OS X background images, choose a solid color, or specify your own image. All three backgrounds are chosen from the Desktop & Screen Saver panel, located within System Preferences (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: To select a background, go to System Preferences.
You can also hold down Control, click the Desktop, and choose Change Desktop Background from the pop-up contextual menu (or right-click, if you're using a mouse with multiple buttons).
Picking something Apple
To choose a background from one of the collections provided by Apple, click one of these groups from the list at the left:
- Apple Images: These default backgrounds range from simple patterns to somewhat strange and ethereal flux shapes.
- Nature: Scenic beauty: blades of grass, sand dunes, snowy hills . . . that sort of thing.
- Abstract: Even weirder twisting shapes in flux, this time with bright contrasting colors. Good for a psychiatrist's office.
- Solid Colors: For those who desire a soothing solid shade.
- Pictures Folder: This displays the images saved in the Pictures folder by the active user.
- Choose Folder: You can open a folder containing images and display them instead.
If you see something you like, click the thumbnail, and Mac OS X displays it in the well and automatically refreshes your background so that you can see what it looks like. (By the way, in the Apple universe, a well is a sunken square area that displays an image — in this case, the background image that you've selected.)
Notice your iPhoto albums in the list? That's no accident — Tiger automatically offers your iPhoto Photo Library so that you can choose images from your iPhoto collection.
Mac OS X automatically manipulates how the background appears on your Desktop. If an image conforms to your screen resolution, fine — otherwise, click the drop-down list box next to the well and you can choose to
- Tile the background. This repeats the image to cover the Desktop. (This is usually done with pattern images to produce a smooth, creamy, seamless look.)
- Fill the screen. This can be used with a solid color to get uniform coverage. The original aspect ratio of the image is preserved, so it's not stretched.
- Stretch the background to fit the Desktop. If your Desktop image is smaller than the Desktop acreage, this works, but be warned — if you try to stretch too small of an image over too large a Desktop, the pixilated result can be pretty frightening. (Think of enlarging an old Kodak Instamatic negative to a 16 x 20 poster. Dots, dots, dots.) The original aspect ratio of the image is not preserved, so you may end up with results that look like the funhouse mirrors at a carnival.
- Center the image on the Desktop. This is my favorite solution for Desktop images that are smaller than your resolution.
Note that this drop-down list appears only if the Desktop picture that you select is not one of the standard Apple images. All the pictures in the Apple Background Images, Nature, Abstract, and Solid Colors categories are automatically scaled to the size of your screen.
To change your Desktop background automatically on a regular basis, enable the Change Picture check box and then choose the delay period from the corresponding drop-down list box. To display the images in random order, also enable the Random Order check box; otherwise, Mac OS X displays them in the order that they appear in the folder.
Choosing a solid color
If you want your favorite color without the distraction of an image as a background, you can choose from a selection of solid colors. You can choose from these colors the same way that you'd pick a default Mac OS X background image.
Selecting your own photo
You can drag your own image into the well from a Finder window to add your own work of art. To view thumbnails of an entire folder, click the Pictures Folder (to display the contents of your personal Pictures folder) or click Choose Folder to specify any folder on your system. Click the desired thumbnail to embellish your Desktop.
Learn how to make Adobe Photoshop your default image viewer and editor for popular file formats like JPEG, PNG and TIFF, as well as Photoshop's own PSD format, in Mac OS X.
Even though every copy of Photoshop, whether it's a standalone version or part of a Creative Cloud subscription, includes a free and powerful file management program called Adobe Bridge, many Mac users still prefer the Finder for locating and opening their images.
While there's nothing technically wrong with that, there is one annoying problem; Mac OS X, at least by default, ignores Photoshop when we open images directly from within a Finder window. Instead, it prefers to open them in Apple's own Preview app with its basic and very limited set of image editing features. Since Photoshop is obviously our editor of choice, let's learn how to easily configure Mac OS X so that our images will automatically open for us in Photoshop every time.
Telegram LLC Social. Mature 17+ 288,025. Add to Wishlist. And remember to download Telegram for the best stickers! 10 Sticker Packs for WA. Telegram LLC. The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime installs a number of runtime libraries from the legacy DirectX SDK for some games that use D3DX9, D3DX10, D3DX11, XAudio 2.7, XInput 1.3, XACT, and/or Managed DirectX 1.1. All releases of X.Org since 7.0 can be downloaded from one of the primary download sites, or from a mirror close to you. Development releases are usually only available on the primary sites. X download.
Note that this tutorial is specifically for Mac users. For the PC version, see Make Photoshop Your Default Image Editor in Windows 10.
This is lesson 2 of 10 in Chapter 2 - Opening Images into Photoshop.
Turning On File Name Extensions
First, navigate to a folder on your Mac that contains one or more images. Here, I've opened a folder that's sitting on my Desktop. Inside the folder are four image files. Starting from the left, we have a PNG file, a JPEG file, a Photoshop PSD file, and a TIFF file. How do we know which file type we're looking at? We know because of the three letter extension at the end of each name:
If you're not seeing the extensions at the end of your file names, go up to the Finder menu in the top left of your screen and choose Preferences:
This opens the Finder Preferences dialog box. Click the Advanced tab at the top, then select Show all filename extensions by clicking inside its checkbox. Close the dialog box when you're done. You should now see the file extensions listed at the end of your file names:
The Default Image Viewer
Let's try opening one of the images to see what happens. I'll double-click on my JPEG image ('fashion.jpg') to open it:
Even though I have the latest version of Photoshop installed, and even though Photoshop just happens to be the world's most powerful image editor, Mac OS X completely ignores it and instead opens my photo in its own Preview app (fashion photo from Adobe Stock):
That's obviously not what I wanted so I'll close out of the Preview app by going up to the Preview menu at the top of the screen and choosing Quit Preview:
If you do decide to spruce up your background, you have three choices: You can select one of the default Mac OS X background images, choose a solid color, or specify your own image. All three backgrounds are chosen from the Desktop & Screen Saver panel, located within System Preferences (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: To select a background, go to System Preferences.
You can also hold down Control, click the Desktop, and choose Change Desktop Background from the pop-up contextual menu (or right-click, if you're using a mouse with multiple buttons).
Picking something Apple
To choose a background from one of the collections provided by Apple, click one of these groups from the list at the left:
- Apple Images: These default backgrounds range from simple patterns to somewhat strange and ethereal flux shapes.
- Nature: Scenic beauty: blades of grass, sand dunes, snowy hills . . . that sort of thing.
- Abstract: Even weirder twisting shapes in flux, this time with bright contrasting colors. Good for a psychiatrist's office.
- Solid Colors: For those who desire a soothing solid shade.
- Pictures Folder: This displays the images saved in the Pictures folder by the active user.
- Choose Folder: You can open a folder containing images and display them instead.
If you see something you like, click the thumbnail, and Mac OS X displays it in the well and automatically refreshes your background so that you can see what it looks like. (By the way, in the Apple universe, a well is a sunken square area that displays an image — in this case, the background image that you've selected.)
Notice your iPhoto albums in the list? That's no accident — Tiger automatically offers your iPhoto Photo Library so that you can choose images from your iPhoto collection.
Mac OS X automatically manipulates how the background appears on your Desktop. If an image conforms to your screen resolution, fine — otherwise, click the drop-down list box next to the well and you can choose to
- Tile the background. This repeats the image to cover the Desktop. (This is usually done with pattern images to produce a smooth, creamy, seamless look.)
- Fill the screen. This can be used with a solid color to get uniform coverage. The original aspect ratio of the image is preserved, so it's not stretched.
- Stretch the background to fit the Desktop. If your Desktop image is smaller than the Desktop acreage, this works, but be warned — if you try to stretch too small of an image over too large a Desktop, the pixilated result can be pretty frightening. (Think of enlarging an old Kodak Instamatic negative to a 16 x 20 poster. Dots, dots, dots.) The original aspect ratio of the image is not preserved, so you may end up with results that look like the funhouse mirrors at a carnival.
- Center the image on the Desktop. This is my favorite solution for Desktop images that are smaller than your resolution.
Note that this drop-down list appears only if the Desktop picture that you select is not one of the standard Apple images. All the pictures in the Apple Background Images, Nature, Abstract, and Solid Colors categories are automatically scaled to the size of your screen.
To change your Desktop background automatically on a regular basis, enable the Change Picture check box and then choose the delay period from the corresponding drop-down list box. To display the images in random order, also enable the Random Order check box; otherwise, Mac OS X displays them in the order that they appear in the folder.
Choosing a solid color
If you want your favorite color without the distraction of an image as a background, you can choose from a selection of solid colors. You can choose from these colors the same way that you'd pick a default Mac OS X background image.
Selecting your own photo
You can drag your own image into the well from a Finder window to add your own work of art. To view thumbnails of an entire folder, click the Pictures Folder (to display the contents of your personal Pictures folder) or click Choose Folder to specify any folder on your system. Click the desired thumbnail to embellish your Desktop.
Learn how to make Adobe Photoshop your default image viewer and editor for popular file formats like JPEG, PNG and TIFF, as well as Photoshop's own PSD format, in Mac OS X.
Even though every copy of Photoshop, whether it's a standalone version or part of a Creative Cloud subscription, includes a free and powerful file management program called Adobe Bridge, many Mac users still prefer the Finder for locating and opening their images.
While there's nothing technically wrong with that, there is one annoying problem; Mac OS X, at least by default, ignores Photoshop when we open images directly from within a Finder window. Instead, it prefers to open them in Apple's own Preview app with its basic and very limited set of image editing features. Since Photoshop is obviously our editor of choice, let's learn how to easily configure Mac OS X so that our images will automatically open for us in Photoshop every time.
Telegram LLC Social. Mature 17+ 288,025. Add to Wishlist. And remember to download Telegram for the best stickers! 10 Sticker Packs for WA. Telegram LLC. The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime installs a number of runtime libraries from the legacy DirectX SDK for some games that use D3DX9, D3DX10, D3DX11, XAudio 2.7, XInput 1.3, XACT, and/or Managed DirectX 1.1. All releases of X.Org since 7.0 can be downloaded from one of the primary download sites, or from a mirror close to you. Development releases are usually only available on the primary sites. X download.
Note that this tutorial is specifically for Mac users. For the PC version, see Make Photoshop Your Default Image Editor in Windows 10.
This is lesson 2 of 10 in Chapter 2 - Opening Images into Photoshop.
Turning On File Name Extensions
First, navigate to a folder on your Mac that contains one or more images. Here, I've opened a folder that's sitting on my Desktop. Inside the folder are four image files. Starting from the left, we have a PNG file, a JPEG file, a Photoshop PSD file, and a TIFF file. How do we know which file type we're looking at? We know because of the three letter extension at the end of each name:
If you're not seeing the extensions at the end of your file names, go up to the Finder menu in the top left of your screen and choose Preferences:
This opens the Finder Preferences dialog box. Click the Advanced tab at the top, then select Show all filename extensions by clicking inside its checkbox. Close the dialog box when you're done. You should now see the file extensions listed at the end of your file names:
The Default Image Viewer
Let's try opening one of the images to see what happens. I'll double-click on my JPEG image ('fashion.jpg') to open it:
Even though I have the latest version of Photoshop installed, and even though Photoshop just happens to be the world's most powerful image editor, Mac OS X completely ignores it and instead opens my photo in its own Preview app (fashion photo from Adobe Stock):
That's obviously not what I wanted so I'll close out of the Preview app by going up to the Preview menu at the top of the screen and choosing Quit Preview:
Making Photoshop The Default Image Viewer And Editor
So how do we tell Mac OS X to open this image in Photoshop instead of in Preview? And more importantly, how to we tell it to use Photoshop not just for this one image this one time but for every JPEG image we open in the future? It's actually very easy to do. First, Control-click on a JPEG image you want to open:
Make An Image For My Desktop On Macbook Air
Then choose Get Info from the menu that appears:
A long, narrow Info dialog box will open full of details about the image. Look for the section that says Open with. You may need to click the small arrow to the left of the section's name to twirl it open. This section tells us which program Mac OS X is currently using to open JPEG files. By default, it's set to Preview:
Click on 'Preview.app' to open a list of other apps currently installed on your system and choose Adobe Photoshop from the list. If you have more than one version of Photoshop installed, choose the most recent version. Again, at the time I'm writing this, the most recent version is CC 2015.5:
There's just one step remaining. To set Photoshop as the new default app for opening all JPEG files, not just this one, click the Change All button:
You'll be asked if you're sure you want to open all JPEG files (that is, all files with a '.jpg' extension) with Photoshop. Click Continue to confirm it:
You can close out of the Info dialog box at this point, and that's all there is to it! Photoshop is now set to open all of your JPEG files. I'll double-click once again on my JPEG image in the Finder window:
And sure enough, instead of opening in the Preview app as it did before, this time the photo opens for me in my latest version of Photoshop:
PNG Files
So far, so good. We've set Photoshop as the default app for opening JPEG files. But we still need to set Photoshop as the default app for opening the other file types as well, so let's run through the steps quickly. I'll return to my Finder window, then I'll Control-click on my PNG file ('butterfly.png') and choose Get Info from the menu:
Make An Image For My Desktop On Macbook
This opens the Info dialog box where we see that Preview, not Photoshop, is currently set as the default app for opening PNG files:
I'll click on 'Preview.app' and select my latest version of Photoshop from the list. Then, to set Photoshop as the default app for all PNG files, I'll click Change All:
I'll confirm that I want all PNG files to open in Photoshop by clicking Continue:
Then I'll close out of the Info dialog box. And now, when I open my PNG file from my Finder window by double-clicking on its thumbnail, the image opens in Photoshop, as will all PNG files from now on (butterfly design from Adobe Stock):
TIFF Files
Let's do the same thing for TIFF files. I'll return once again to my Finder window where I'll Control-click Bittorrent 64 bit windows 10. on my TIFF image ('portrait.tif'). Then, I'll choose Get Info from the menu: Editor for php mac os 10.13.
In the Info dialog box, we see that just like with the JPEG and PNG files, Mac OS X is using Preview to open TIFF files. It's possible that your system may have a different app selected so don't worry if it does. All that matters is that we change it to Photoshop:
I'll once again click on 'Preview.app' and select my latest version of Photoshop from the list. Then I'll make the change apply to all TIFF files by clicking Change All:
I'll click Continue to confirm the change:
Then I'll close out of the Info dialog box. And now when I double-click on my TIFF file to open it in the Finder window, we see that it opens automatically in Photoshop (portrait photo from Adobe Stock):
PSD Files
Finally, while Mac OS X will usually set Photoshop as the default app for opening PSD files (since PSD is Photoshop's native file format), it still never hurts to check. Plus, if you have multiple versions of Photoshop installed on your computer, it's worth making sure that your PSD files will open in the newest version, as we're about to see.
I'll return one last time to my Finder window where I'll Control-click on my PSD file ('performer.psd') and choose Get Info:
In the Info dialog box, we see that sure enough, Mac OS X is using Photoshop to open PSD files. But, there's a problem. I still have older versions of Photoshop installed on my system, and Mac OS X has chosen one of the older versions, not the newest version. Here we see that it's set to use Photoshop CC 2014, while the newest version (at the time I'm writing this) is CC 2015.5:
I'll click on 'Adobe Photoshop CC 2014.app' and choose the latest version of Photoshop from the list:
Then, as I've done with the other file types, I'll make the change apply to all PSD files by clicking Change All:
I'll click Continue to confirm the change:
Then I'll close out of the Info dialog box. And now when I double-click on my PSD file in the Finder window, it opens automatically in my latest version of Photoshop (performer photo from Adobe Stock):
Where to go next..
And there we have it! That's how to make Photoshop your default image editor in Mac OS X! If you're also a Windows user, learn how to make Photoshop your default image editor in Windows 10.
In the next lesson in this chapter, we'll learn how to create a new document in Photoshop using the redesigned New Document dialog box!
Or check out any of the other lessons in this chapter:
- 02. Make Photoshop your default image editor in Mac OS X
For more chapters and for our latest tutorials, visit our Photoshop Basics section!