Tip: iPhone - How to Set Any Picture as Wallpaper - iPhoneGuide Blog - Daily reports on the Apple iPhone from SmartPhoneToday

Tip: iPhone - How to Set Any Picture as Wallpaper

By James Alan Miller on May 1, 2008 10:40 AM

With the iPhone, you can use any picture that you've synced through iTunes or taken with the built-in camera as wallpaper. It is a great and simple way to add a little bit of your personality to your iPhone.

Here's how to do it:

Press the home button to get to the iPhone's home screen.

Select settings.

Select Wallpaper.

Choose the folder from which you want to select your wallpaper image.

You'll see one labeled Wallpaper at the top with pre-loaded wallpaper pictures from Apple. That's where our rose in the picture above comes from. Next up is Camera Roll, where all the pictures you take with the iPhone are stored. Underneath that is the general Photo Library folder and then all the folders you've synced from your desktop.

Select an image.

What you'll see next is how the image you selected will look as wallpaper.

Thankfully, you can move and adjust the picture as much as you like with your fingers through Apple's multi-touch interface. Use one finger to move an image around. Use two, pinching them together and widening them apart, to shrink and enlarge the picture.

Once your satisfied with how the image looks, select Set Wallpaper.

That’s it, you’re all set. The next time you turn your iPhone on, you’ll be greeted by the picture of your choice. Unfortunately, that’s just about the only place you’ll see wallpaper with the iPhone. It doesn’t even appear on the home screen, which remains a dull black no matter what.

And, annoyingly, there doesn't appear to be any easy way to go back to not having wallpaper once you start using it. It seems you have to stop syncing or delete that image from your iPhone. All you can easily do, apparently, is change the wallpaper to another picture.

In addition to your own pictures, there are free wallpaper sites out there that have images you can download already formatted to fit smoothly on the iPhone's 320 x 480 pixel resolution display. Simply download them to your computer and sync them to your iPhone.