Use an alternative Earth-from-space desktop picture

Jan 11, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Apple includes many high-quality desktop pictures with all Macs, including NASA’s iconic Blue Marble picture of the Earth from space. While I hold nothing against Apple for including the version of the image that shows the western hemisphere, primarily North and South America, I thought it would be nice to have a version of the image that actually shows the part of the planet where I live, namely the eastern hemisphere.

NASA provides a high-resolution image (7.2MB TIFF) of the eastern hemisphere Blue Marble. Download the image, and place it in the same folder as Apple’s pre-installed Nature images: /Library/Desktop Pictures/Nature

The Apple image is simply the Blue Marble superimposed on a pure black background to fit a 16:10-ratio widescreen display without distorting the image. However, NASA’s original image is perfectly square. You therefore need to select the image from the Desktop tab of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane and choose Fit to Screen. The sides will probably be filled with a default aqua blue colour, so click on the color palette picker and select a black fill color for the remainder of the screen space (try the Licorice crayon).

Extending the original image file to fill a computer screen without any space left on the sides (Apple’s image is at 2,560 x 1,600 pixels) is an easy exercise in Photoshop or GIMP that is left to the reader! Note that users who have the latest iMac models have a 16:9-ratio screen, which may affect the desired extended image size.

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