[updated 7/16/2011]
The Apple iPad has landed! The feature that amazes everyone is the iPad’s vivid LED-backlit IPS display which makes an awesome platform to show off your favorite photographs. Another exciting feature is the ability to customize the iPad wallpaper background. At launch of the iPad 1, the default background on the iPad has some falling stars which many people mistake as scratches on the screen. The ‘scratch’ background was actually the biggest issue on launch day according to local Apple store. I know the first 4 people I showed the iPad too all asked right away why the screen was scratched! This prompted me to start playing around with creating my own custom backgrounds. Below is the process that I’ve been using to customize my iPad with some of my favorite images.
For personal use only, I’ve share some of my iPad backgrounds on Google +.
My photo management program of choice is Adobe Lightroom. The first thing I do is find an image that will look interesting on the iPad and select ‘Export’ in Lightroom.
The iPad’s native resolution is 1024×768 and 132 pixels per inch. It can be viewed in landscape or portrait so I like to resize my images to 1200×1200 to make sure the image will be viewable across the entire screen regardless of the orientation.
In the above sample, I used 72 pixels per inch which is my default for sharing on the web. On the iPad, I like to take advantage of the slightly higher resolution by changing pixels per inch to 132 before exporting.
I use Jeffrey’s “Export to Flickr” Lightroom Plugin to export directly to Flickr.
After uploading to Flickr, navigate to the image on your iPad and select “All Sizes” above the image.
Click on ‘Download’. Make sure to select the image with resolution higher then 768 on the shortest side or it will not stretch across the entire screen.
Now press and hold on the image for a 2-3 second. Then release and select ‘Save Image’ in the pop up menu.
Navigate to Photos app and select the image. Then select the ‘Export’ button in the top menu and click on ‘Use as Wallpaper’.
In the top menu, choose to either ’Select Lock Screen’ or ‘Select Home Screen’ or ‘Set Both’.
Export the Photos application to view your new wallpaper background!
If you selected to apply to your lock screen, then press power button to lock and home button to view on the lock screen.
One caveat – the iPad will crop the image when rotated to landscape mode. Depending on your image, this might result in a good result like my image above which lost the main subject of the photo.
I’ve found it is best to select an image with the primary subject in the middle 2/3s.
This image still looks good when rotated and preserves the primary subject.
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