Correct The Size of Photos for Wallpaper

Well, what do you expect? When a picture is less than screen size it has to be stretched in order to fill the screen. If you want to minimize the effect then cut the upper and lower regions of the picture in order to keep the aspect ratio when stretching.

floba

OK, I see you are using the same version of OS X as I do. When I go to System Preferences > Desktop and Screensaver, I can choose an option from the drop-down menu that does exactly what you want (note that there are two options that deal with stretching the image). Unfortunately I can't tell what it's called in English because my language is set to German. Just try all available options.

floba

Shrinking large images while keeping the aspect ratio is a bit tricky. The option I meant above works well for stretching small images but not for shrinking large ones without distortion.

I recommend using some program like [Gimp|http://darwingimp.sourceforge.net> and cropping the image to the desired size. (Maybe you can do that with iPhoto, too. I don't know.)

floba

Addendum: What happens if you choose "Centered" as display option from System Preferences > Desktop and Screensaver?

OK, to narrow down your options a bit, can you tell me your screen resolution and the resolution of the image in question?

*If the aspect ratios are not the same then it's simply impossible to shrink them to fit the screen without either distorting or cropping them.*

(Because here in Germany it's nearly midnight, I now go to sleep and will see further tomorrow 🙂 . Good luck.)

Message was edited by: floba

In one of your previous posts you wrote

No I don't want to enlarge small photos, just shrink large ones!

So I assumed you indeed want to shrink large ones and the problem lies there. Now you say

The large ones reduce fine

I must confess I'm a bit puzzled. If you want large ones to shrink and they do shrink the way you want then everything seems ok for me.

but the small ones enlarge an become grainy

BTW, that's absolutely normal and there's no workaround.

floba

So just to understand you right: you want to "zoom" the picture (and keep the aspect ratio) to fill the screen - although this will mean for the upper and lower regions to be "out of sight"?