Why? Because of the Windows Personalization Gallery and the steady stream of new themes it provides.

Today I would like to look at Winter and Christmas themes. While it may be a bit early in the year, considering that we are still in the Autumn period, I still think that some readers may enjoy the overview.

The themes are limited to users of the Windows 7 operating systems. The wallpapers on the other hand can be used on other operating systems as well. Just extract the .themepack themes on your computer with a program like 7-zip. All wallpapers are located in the DesktopBackground folder.

Czech Winter theme

The beauty of the Czech winter, from the rooftops of Prague to tracks in the country snow leading to pine forests and other scenes of natural beauty.

Holiday Lights

Brighten up your desktop with sparkling images of holiday celebration and winter wonder in this free Windows 7 theme.

Snow Sports theme

Powder power: Catch air with the dramatic mountain skiing and snowboarding photos in this free Windows 7 theme.

Winter Sports theme from Samsung

Go for the gold with this high-energy, high-altitude free Windows 7 theme from Samsung, a proud sponsor of the U.S. Olympic team. Capture the excitement of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games!

Winter Theme

Serene scenes of snowy landscapes grace this seasonal free Windows 7 theme.

Arctic Theme

Enjoy the frozen beauty of the Arctic Circle and its wildlife—no frostbite necessary—in this free Windows 7 theme.

Dogs in Winter theme

The grass and foliage may have faded, but not the playful spirits of the doggies in this free theme for Windows 7. Enjoy them playing in leaves, running madly over the snow, chewing on stuff, and getting frost all over their whiskers.

Snow Angels

Snowflakes fall as delicately as angel wings in this free wintry Windows 7 theme.

The Windows Personalization Gallery is not the only place where you can get themes for free. One great location for hundreds if not thousands of themes is Deviant Art.

Not to forget that Microsoft added automatic switching of wallpapers in the Windows 7 operating system.

The new desktop wallpaper downloader and switcher Color Desker is a sophisticated program that comes with all the bells and whistles one would expect. The program downloads wallpapers regularly from the Internet. These images are then displayed in the application interface where they can either be selected manually or automatically.

New wallpapers are added by the developer regularly which are then retrieved by the software on startup. A double-click on a photo sets it as the desktop background. From what I can tell, all photos come in high resolution that fit nicely on a hd computer monitor.

Wallpapers can be changed manually with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-w or from the File > Change Wallpaper menu. It can take several seconds to make the switch. The program stops responding in that time which is something that the developer needs to work on.

Automatic wallpaper changing options are available in status bar of the application. A click on the pulldown menu at the left side of the bar are options to set wallpaper changing intervals. If set, wallpapers will automatically be changed on the system.

One interesting feature of Color Desker is the ability to rate wallpapers. A right-click on a wallpaper opens a context menu with options to “love” or “hate” the wallpaper. The program will use those information in the automatic wallpaper changing algorithm.

Color Desker is a free program for the Windows operating system. The software requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0. It can be downloaded from the developers Blogspot website.

Windows XP and Windows Vista users both received less than a dozen official themes since their release. Windows 7 users on the other hand are constantly bombarded with new themes and wallpapers that Microsoft publishes in the Windows Personalization Gallery.

This can be attributed partly to the theme engine changes in Windows 7 which make it easier to produce and distribute themes but also to the change in strategy.

Microsoft has released two additional Windows 7 themes in the past days. The Czech Spring and Life themes are both available for download at the official theme gallery.

The Czech Spring theme adds eight new desktop wallpapers to the operating system while the Life seem adds another five.

All wallpapers are offered in the resolution of 1920×1200. Windows 7 users who want to download them may visit the Windows Personalization Gallery to do so. The themes can be installed by double-clicking them once they have been downloaded to the local computer systme.

Downloading many of those wallpapers manually can be quite a strenuous task considering the amount that is offered on the Nation Geographic’s website. The National Geographic’s Wallpaper Downloader automates the download for users who would like to download the majority or even all of the wallpapers that are offered on the website.

The wallpaper downloader gives the user the option to download all National Geographic wallpapers from 2008 and 2009 to the local computer system. The user can download wallpapers from both years or only one year. The resolution can also be selected in the downloader’s interface. The resolutions offered correspond to the resolutions available on the National Geographic website.

The download itself is started with the click on the Start downloading wallpapers now button. The process itself is hidden from the user and the only indicator that wallpapers are downloaded is the creation of the directories 2008 and 2009 in the designated download folder.

NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader will display a notification after all wallpapers for a year have been downloaded to the PC. It will automatically close after it has finished downloading the last wallpapers. The portable program is compatible with most versions of the Windows operating system including Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

The interval can be changed to display a new wallpaper after specified time has passed or when a certain time of the day is reached. Wallperizer can resize wallpapers automatically based on an if else statement that might confuse users who do not code.

There is also a tab for basic effects that include normalizing the brightness and setting a gamma level of wallpapers.

More interesting than the previously mentioned options that are more or less integrated in most wallpaper changers are the following features. Wallperizer can display a calendar on the wallpaper. The calendar can be defined in detail including its position and detail level.

This calendar might be interesting for users who would like to see these information on their desktop without having to use a desktop widget or software that is displaying it.

The calendar cannot display customized date or synchronize date with other applications. Users who are interested in downloading the application can do so at the developer’s website.

Some users on the other hand like it ultra-comfortable. That is where the software program ILift comes into play. It is a download manager for wallpapers on the InterfaceLift website. It needs to be configured once so that wallpapers for the right screen resolution are downloaded by the application. The right screen resolution and aspect ration can be set in the options. This is also the location to set the download path for the wallpaper images and the sort order on the InterfaceLift website.

The last step in the configuration involves selecting the number of pages that the wallpaper downloader should crawl at the InterfaceLift website. The default value is that only the frontpage is crawled by the application. This can be changed to a greater value so that some or even all pages are crawled for wallpapers.

Setting the to value to 192 would crawl all pages that are currently available at the wallpaper site. ILift should work with all versions of the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from Softpedia as no developer website is known at this point in time.

via Techie Buzz

Here it is that the user adds folders or single wallpapers to the list that are rotated by the program. It is possible to add multiple folders and subfolders to the program in case there are several directories containing wallpapers on the computer system.

It is possible to change the order of the wallpapers or use the shuffle button to change it automatically. The program itself will works its way from top to bottom which is a bit predictable.

Several parameters can be configured. This includes the time period, the wallpaper style which becomes important if a wallpaper does not fit the screen, the resize quality and background color.

Wallpapa has a low resource usage once it has been configured and minimized to the Windows system tray. It uses a little bit more than two Megabytes of computer memory which is acceptable for this kind of programs and usually less than other wallpaper changes need to run in the background.

Take a look at our Windows 7 Wallpapers repository if you are looking for some interesting new wallpapers.

This is probably the same line of thought that convinced Dario Volaric to create a back to basics edition of this Wallpaper Shifter application. This will probably appeal to many users who are looking for a lightweight wallpaper changer. The application picks a random wallpaper from a directory selected by the user and sets it as the active Windows wallpaper.

Once that has been done it closes down which means that it will not use any system resources from that point on. The application was designed to run during system startup but it can also be run when executed while Windows is running.

It comes with a few options to change the scale mode (automatic, crop, fit, center) and the background (default, blur, edge repeat) but that’s it. If you are looking for a one time a session wallpaper changer then this might be exactly what you are looking for.

Make sure to check out the wallpaper repositories Windows 7 Wallpapers or Windows Wallpapers.

BBsnap can be used without registration which is the most user friendly approach. A new wallpaper can be created in just a few steps. It begins by entering a tag or keyword in the Flickr search box. The service will then automatically pull images from Flickr. A click on an image will load start the wallpaper creation.

The user has to pick his BlackBerry cell phone from a list of available phones first. The selected image will then be loaded. A rectangle with the same dimensions as the screen of the BlackBerry cell phone will be displayed. It can be moved around in the image to pick the best part of it for the wallpaper.

A click on Done will start the wallpaper creation. The wallpaper can then be downloaded to the computer to transfer it from there to the BlackBerry cell phone. The other possibility is to point the browser of the cell phone to that page and download it from there.

The Internet literally contains thousands of wallpaper sites, most of them crappy and ad infested. The following sites have only a few ads – if any – and provide a good selection of at least a few hundreds high definition wallpapers.

Most websites in the list offer multiple resolutions and should provide wallpapers for barely any monitor resolutions. If you know of a great website that should be in the list let everyone know in the comments.

Cool HD Wallpapers

Categorizes wallpapers by size and provides multiple sizes for all wallpapers.

Deskcity

The only foreign (that is non English) site of this list. Offers many high definition wallpapers with many unusual sizes such as 1600×3200.

Deviant Art HDTV / Widescreen

Offers probably the largest selection of hdtv and widescreen wallpapers powered by the sheer size of the Deviant art user base.

Flickr

The Flickr Wallpaper pool contains thousands of wallpaper images with a minimum size of 1024×768 but most higher than that. The choice is great but the wallpapers lack information on the preview pages. One needs to click through individual wallpapers to check the supported screen resolutions.

HD Desktop Wallpapers

The majority of the content of hd desktop wallpapers are celebrity wallpapers who make up more than 80% of all wallpapers. Wallpapers come in all possible resolutions and it is quite hard to find HD wallpapers on the site. Seems a bit deserted as well.

HD Wallpapers

All wallpapers are available in 1600×1200 format only. Site offers nine categories like cars, celebrities and tv shows.

Interfacelift

Provides access to more than 1600 HD wallpapers that are supplied in various sizes up to 2560×1600. Offers various ways to browse wallpapers, for example by tags or artist.

My HD Wallpaper

Thousands of hd wallpapers in various categories like celebrities, abstract and computer generated. Site provides access to various sizes for each wallpaper and offers a 2560×1600 category that contains 199 wallpapers.

Professional Wallpapers

Lists all available wallpaper resolutions on the main page which is a refreshing change. Uses tags to categorize wallpapers. Wallpaper sizes up to 2560×1600.

Steampunk Wallpaper

A blog style wallpaper site that is rather hard to navigate because of this but contains more information about each wallpaper which is a refreshing change. Wallpapers are tagged properly and the tag cloud provides a good way of navigating the site.

Wallpaper HD

Many different wallpaper categories, even one about the 2008 US election. Sizes up to 2560×1600.

http://www.deskcity.com/

It was designed primarily with webcams in mind but it is basically possible to enter any url that points to an image in the application. Alternatively images from the hard drive and the current wallpaper image can be added to the list of possible wallpapers. There is unfortunately no preview of the images available which means that the best way of checking if an image link is valid is to check it in a web browser.

The wallpaper manager provides two options to change wallpapers automatically. It is possible to change them at system startup or every x minutes where x is a number between 3 and 30. Web wallpaper is a Java application which does have consequences.

The application is only compatible to Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Vista although currently but the chance of porting it to other operating systems is there. The negative aspect on the other hand is that it uses roughly 38 Megabytes of computer memory and about the same amount of virtual memory while running in minimized state which is a lot.

Cleaning the memory brought the computer memory usage down to 1.5 Megabytes which quickly rose to about 13 Megabytes but stayed consistent on that level.

Wallpapers from MSN is not your usual wallpaper manager though. It displays the Windows wallpapers in an image library and gives the user options to add his own wallpapers to the application. Each wallpaper can be processed before it is being used as the Windows wallpaper.

The user can use basic photo editing functions like cutting, rotating or cropping images. More interesting that that is the option to add elements to the wallpapers. Three types of objects are available that can be added to a selected wallpaper: Foreground Images, Graphic Elements and Text.

The changes can be previewed and saved to the library. The Wallpaper Settings menu can be used to pick a permanent wallpaper or to rotate the wallpapers frequently. There is no need to run the application if you want to pick a downloaded wallpaper from the list and use it as a static Windows wallpaper or move it to another operating system.

Wallpapers from MSN is one of those nice to have applications for casual computer users. All effects could be added with a photo editor as well. Most wallpapers are well done and the program can be used to increase the wallpaper collection on a computer rapidly.

Dream Wallpaper is a Windows Wallpapers application which provides access to wallpapers in several categories including nature, games & movies and cartoon. It ships with a few wallpapers that are installed with the application itself and provides an easy to use interface to browse those local but also network wallpapers.

Network Wallpapers referring obviously to the wallpapers on their website which according to them contains more than 80K wallpapers. Dream Wallpaper uses two tabs to distinguish between widescreen and normal wallpapers. Each tab contains a column on the left hand that links to local and network wallpapers in various categories.

The local wallpapers are accessible right away, a click on a network wallpaper category loads a preview of six wallpapers from the Dream Wallpaper website. The maximum that can be pulled this way is 54 wallpapers in each category which seems a bit unfortunate but is probably part of the greater plan to bring more traffic to their website.

The Windows wallpapers application has a quirk besides that. There is no information about the supported resolution next to the wallpapers which means that it is possible to end up with a wallpaper that gets stretched or otherwise mangled on the computer desktop.

There is also no direct way to include already stored wallpapers in the application. The only possible solution would be to move the wallpapers into the program folder. This requires however the creation of a thumbnail for the same wallpaper. A far better solution would be to pick the wallpapers that you like from the application and copy them to your local wallpaper folder.

The website is clearly structured and good to navigate. It does contain advertisement but not enough to avoid it. It uses a better structure as well, wallpapers can be sorted by screen resolution or theme. The good thing about this is that Linux and Macintosh users can simply visit the website and download the wallpapers they want which Windows users obviously could as well.

The application would make more sense if it would provide additional options and some comfort in adding local wallpapers that have existed on the system prior to installing the software.

That probably sounds more difficulty than it is. After starting Desktop Takeover the user is greeted with a blank screen. Desktop Takeover does not make use of the initial desktop wallpaper unless it is added in the application as well. This is done by clicking on Wallpaper > Load New Background Image. The selected image should be shown immediately as the new background.

Additional photos can be added by dragging them into the program interface or by making use of the Add Photos button on top. Photos that have been added can be moved around and resized easily to fit the screen. Photos are automatically resized if they are to large to fit the screen resolution.

The developer’s website contains a few examples of user desktops after adding photos to them, they show a world map and pictures of countries the user visited in the past, pictures of animal companions, trains, family pictures or cars.

The user can also drag and drop webcams or complete image folders on the desktop with ease. The build in desktop wallpaper rotator makes it possible to use different wallpapers and photos that get exchanged automatically.

Desktop Takeover supports the creation of picture channels. Picture channels are series of pictures that get rotated in a slideshow-like fashion. Local images or webcam feeds can be used for this feature.

The options provide access to customization like setting picture transparency and multi-monitor options. One feature did not work on my computer though. The program offers the option to immediately resize and move images on the “real” desktop by left-clicking and holding the mouse button. It could be that this is driver related though.

I also experienced two crashes of the configuration window. The program itself remained stable however.

Desktop Takeover provides an easy solution to users who would like to add photos to their desktop that are placed on the desktop wallpaper.

It is however rather easy to create your own and it does not really take that long. Today I’m going to show you how you can easily create mobile phone wallpapers in no time at all.

The application that I’m going to use is called Weys. It provides a few default sizes for several mobile phones including a few Sony Ericcson, Nokia and Motorola phones but also an option to select a custom sized wallpaper.

If you select one of the mobile phones from the list the program window will change to that mobile phone and the display area is the area that will be captured as the wallpaper. The window can be moved around freely.

The custom window can be changed dynamically in size to fit the screen dimensions of mobile phones that are not available as templates.

The wallpapers can be saved in four different image formats including png, jpg, bmp and gif. Weys is offering a great way of creating a mobile phone wallpaper. It is missing an option to capture a larger screen area and reduce the size of it in proportion so that the screen would fit on the mobile phone.

Frankly, the one makes the other irrelevant, although I would have been very, very impressed if 360 Desktop worked across two displays creating a huge scrolling desktop. In fact I hope its a feature they consider introducing.

"Give someone a second monitor, let them use it for while, and then try to take it away. It just isn’t going to happen.",

Suzanne Ross, Microsoft Research

I couldn’t agree more.

I had a quick Google and found Display Fusion, a awesome little application to customise your dual monitors, either by having different wallpapers on each, or by having one stretched across the two.

I favour the latter, as nothing looks better then a huge, high resolution image displayed like so. For some truly amazing dual monitor images try Mandolux and Digital Blasphemy.

After the initial buzz of using two monitors I also found myself getting annoyed with the fact you have to share one taskbar between the two.

The pretty self-explanatory Multi-Monitor Taskbar puts a taskbar on the second monitor and lets you have programs minimise to this instead of the one on the main display. gHacks has covered this before and this is where I found it.

As some people pointed out in the comments for that article, Ultramon is possibly a better alternative and a beta for Vista is available, but unfortunately its shareware, not freeware.

Wallpapers are divided into categories like Games, Graphic Design and Photography which can be checked separately. If you only want graphic design wallpapers you leave that category checked and uncheck all other categories.

The bad side of this approach is the limited choice. Wallpapers will only be chosen from the available ones giving the user no control in this matter. It would be nicer if the program would provide a custom category that would allow the user to add his own wallpapers to the program.

Some wallpapers contain information about the artist which some users might not like that much. The Windows version of Desktopia is currently in Beta and requires the .net Framework 3.5 to run. It provides a few additional settings like the interval that the wallpapers should be changed and a buttons to update the application and images.

I personally prefer more control when it comes to wallpapers on my desktop. There is unfortunately no way to download the wallpapers directly from the Desktopia website.

The biggest shortcoming of DreamScene is that it is only available for Windows Vista Ultimate DreamRender looks like a promising candidate for everyone else who is not working with Windows Vista Ultimate. The interface is somewhat confusing and it took a while until I discovered how to add your own videos, pictures, sounds and textures to the application.

DreamRender ships with about a dozen animations. One click is sufficient to load that animation. This does not replace the original wallpaper of the system though. It overlays the animated wallpaper and the original wallpaper will appear if DreamRender is disabled.

To create a new animated wallpaper you need to click on the File > New menu in the settings. There you have the options to select a video, a picture, slideshows and several other backgrounds for your animated wallpaper. Just play around with it for a while and you should find your way.

For complete customization of your system DreamRender can apply textures and colors to your windows, make them transparent, and produce amazing effects every time you move your mouse.

If you ask me personally than I would have to say that animated wallpapers are a waste of time. They are confusing and a distraction if you work with the computer. Guess it’s ok as a screensaver but I would never add them permanently to my desktop and since I do not use a screensaver that option is no option as well.

Most of the downloads link to Javier’s page at Deviant Art where they can be downloaded. Wallpapers are usually available in different sizes. The visual styles can be downloaded in MS style or Windowblinds format. You do need a patched uxtheme.dll to use visual styles on your computer. I did explain the procedure in the article linked above. The icons are icon packs that can be simply used. They are available for Windows and Mac.

Javier explains exactly how users can apply the new visual styles, wallpapers and icons to their system. He links to various free programs that make it easier to change the icons or visual themes. Javier is also offering skins on his website for various applications like Winamp to match the visual styles for the system.

It was funny to realize that Javier actually created the Thallos visual style that I’m using on my system currently. It’s an amazing style.

The basics first. The user has the choice to browse the wallpapers by several filters. Those are standard sized, widescreen wallpapers, dual monitor ones, all or random. Thumbnail sized wallpapers are then displayed and the user can browse through them. A click on a image loads that image in full size. I had troubles downloading the images in Firefox because it always offered me the php file and not the actual wallpaper.

Downloads in Opera worked fine though. The minimum width of all wallpapers on Social Wallpaper is 1280 pixels which ensures a certain quality. Users with lower resolutions can use an image editor to resize the wallpapers easily.

I randomly picked four wallpapers from the standard collection on the website. Think they look really nice.

Social Wallpapering is offering several unique features that make it stick out of the crowd of wallpaper websites. The first that I noticed was that they offer so called Wallpaper packs as torrents. I suppose that this is actually a collection of even all of their wallpapers as torrents to reduce site load and offer the visitor a way to download all the images fast and uncomplicated.

The second is a RSS feed that always displays the latest ten additions to the database. Just subscribe to the feed in your feed reader and get new impressions.

Several features have not been implemented yet. The site will recommend wallpapers to you taking your ratings into consideration. It will offer additional RSS feed options, multiple resolutions for wallpapers, artist information, fix the save as dialog (yihaw) and add a comment function.

SocWall is a side to look out for, it has lots of potential.