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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
August 30, 2009
Q.
I use my own picture for my User's picture,
but it never stays in the group with the
others if I switch to another one. How do I
change the default choices I am offered?
A.
I suspect that you are talking about the
picture that is displayed at the top of the
start menu when you click on Start in XP or
the orb in Vista or Win 7. Windows offers a
small collection of possible pictures to
use, but also allows you to select your own.
The problem as mentioned above is that if
you temporarily select a different picture,
your own picture is no longer displayed with
the other choices.
So, what
you want to be able to do is add your own
pictures and/or remove those you do not want
from the default collection offered to the
user. This can easily be done.
First,
for those not familiar with this user
picture, a little explanation is in order.
Click Start or the orb, then open the
Control Panel and click on Users Accounts,
then User Accounts again if in category
mode, and select your username. You will get
a choice to "Change my/your picture". XP
calls it "My Picture" and Vista & Win7 call
it "Your Picture". Apparently XP thinks it
and you are one, while Vista and Win7 are
outside third parties.
Then you
are given a choice of default pictures, some
of which are probably not appropriate for
everyone. XP displays 24 pictures by
default, Vista - 12, and Win 7 - 36. Would
anyone really want a picture of a fish?
Well, maybe if your name was Fischer, and
your nickname was "Fish", you might.
In order
to edit these pictures you have to know
where Windows keeps them. In XP the path is
C:\Documents and Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\Default
Pictures. In Vista and Win 7, it is
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account
Pictures\Default Pictures. Why these are
hidden so deep in the file hierarchy only
Windows knows, but now you know where to
find them.
There are
some requirements on the pictures you place
here, and as you may already expect, the
requirements for XP are different than for
Vista or Win 7. For XP they should be 48 X
48 pixels in size and for Vista and Win 7,
they should be 128 X 128 pixels in size. In
both, they must be bitmaps with a minimum of
8 bits color depth. Pictures of other pixel
sizes may be tried, but varying degrees of
undesirable distortion may occur.
Bitmap
Defined:
A bitmap is a type of memory organization or
image file format used to store digital
images. The term bitmap comes from the
computer programming terminology, meaning
just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array
of bits. The most common type in Windows is
the .BMP type file.
Microsoft has defined a particular
representation of color bitmaps of different
color depths, as an aid to exchanging
bitmaps between devices and applications
with a variety of internal representations.
They called these Device-Independent Bitmaps
or DIBs, and the file format for them is
called DIB file format or BMP file format.
So, for all practical purposes, when using
Windows and speaking of bitmap type files,
these are the pictures with the .BMP
extension.
Now if
all this bitmap stuff is Greek to you, after
you find the picture you want to use, just
reduce its size to the required 48 or 128
pixels square, paset it in the Default
Pictures folder and give it a try to see if
it looks OK.
As for
what kind of program you can use to resize
the photo, you will have to use something
other than that which is supplied with
Windows. The optimal program is Adobe's
Photoshop, but at $700 this is probably an
overkill for most. There is, however, a very
good, full featured free program called
IrfanView that will suffice nicely. It can
be downloaded
HERE.
Once your
new, properly sized photo has been placed in
the Default Picture folder, it will then
become available as one of the default
pictures available when you go to change the
user's picture. |
