image size for screen background?

brandofamily

I have a customer who would like digtal files for use as screen background...What should re-size to? Pixel dimensions? Let's assume he has a large monitor... I'm not really sure...

colourbox

This is tough. The easy answer is to use the pixel dimension of his monitor. If he ran at 1024x768, you'd do 1024x768.

But he's not going to use that monitor forever. He'll change computers every few years. What if he gets a widescreen laptop? That would be a different proportion. What if he gets a bigger monitor? Then the 1024x768 wouldn't be big enough.

Take the large Dell monitors for instance. You have the standard monitors...
1024 x 768 pixels
1280 x 1024
1600 x 1200

...and the widescreen monitors...
1680 x 1050 pixels
1920 x 1200
2560 x 1600

And you can't predict what new resolutions will be available in the future.

If you don't want to make one for every standard size, maybe a good approach is to make two images, a middle resolution version for standard proportions and another for widescreen proportions, and let them scale to the desktop, even though it won't look good on all the monitors it might be used on. And warn him that this is the case.

BenA2

Hmmm. This is an interesting problem. It'd be cool if MS & Apple came up with an image format for desktop wallpapers similar to icon files--a format that would store an image at multiple resolutions. Then the OS would display the correct resolution for the monitor in use at the time.

Until then (read, never) I think colourbox has the right idea. I would only add that you probably want to make your two images at the highest current screen resolution, since they'll look better scaled down than scaled up.