Create a solid any-color desktop background

Oct 02, '02 08:52:17AM

Contributed by: robg

Apple provides 10 or so solid colors to use as backgrounds in the Desktop system prefs panel, but what if you wanted a different shade? There appears to be no way to pick a solid color other than the 10 provided. Starting with a hint submitted by abrin523 and after some follow-up emails, he and I have figured out a fairly simple way to have a color picker available to create a solid background in any color you'd like to use.

In 10.2, when you use a non-screen-sized image in the Desktop prefs picture well, you'll see a pop-up menu offering choices for what to do with the image: Fill Screen, Stretch to Fill Screen, Center, and Tile. If you select Center, you'll then get a color swatch that, when clicked, displays the standard Apple color selector. Of course, this just gets you a small image in the middle of your screen surrounded by the color you picked ... but if the image you use is a "nothing" image, then you get a desktop covered with the color you chose.

I used Photoshop Elements to create a new 1x1 pixel TIFF image. I then saved it without doing anything to it at all. When I dragged this into the image well, the desktop went white. When I switched to Center mode and chose a color, though, the chosen color covered 100% of the desktop.

You could, of course, do this by creating an image swatch of the color you wish to use and then using "Tile" to fill the screen with it. But you'll have to create a swatch for each color you wish to use. If you use a blank image, though, you can select your own color through the Apple color picker each time your mood changes.

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