[HOWTO] WallPaper Cropping guide for A101 and A70

Note: This is a work in progress.
Note: All Image manipulation is done with GIMP.
Note: This guide is mainly for the A101 but can also be applied for the A70.

I was getting sick of not be able to take a good picture and use it as a wallpaper so that it looked good. I know there is an alternative "MultiPicture Live Wallpaper" but that thing is a memory hog.

PART 1
So I came up with this picture it's a PNG of 1200x1024. The different grids are the following sizes.

• Blue: 8px
• Green: 16px
• Red: 32px
• White: 64px

When this is set as a wallpaper we can finally see what is happening to the image.

Here are the screenshots for the 5 screens of the Stock Launcher of the Archos 101.

Screen 1


Screen 2


Screen 3


Screen 4


Screen 5


Since the status bar can not be hidden on the Stock Launcher we loose 32px at the top and on the right with the soft buttons we loose 40px. When positioned on the first screen we have a good view of the top left corner (1024x600) of the reference picture.

Now lets get to work with this picture below.


Size: 1680x1050

So what do we need to do. The result must be an image with a size of 1200x1024 for the A101 and 960x800 for the A70 where only the top 600px (A101) 480px (A70) will be visible in landscape mode.

• Scaling the image to a height of 600px and keeping the aspect in mind. The result is a picture of 960x600
• On the bottom add a 424px black border.
• On both sides add a 120px black border.

and the result is

Size: 1200x1024

And the screenshot to prove it works.



This was tested with the Stock Launcher and ADW.Launcher.

PART 2

So this worked out because the original picture has a black background. So here is the solution for other pictures.

I made a multi layer xcf file with GIMP to address the problem. You can download it here for the A101 and here for the A70.

1. Open WallPaper_cropping.xcf in GIMP.
   
2. Select the "Background" layer.
3. File -> Open as Layer -> select the picture you want to crop.
   
4. Scale the layer to 1200px width and keep the aspect correct.
   
5. Position the layer so that the visible part looks good.
   
6. Turn visibility on/off so that only the layers "Background:, "The Picture", "Black Not Visible Part" are turned on.
   
7. Save the image as PNG with option "Merge Visible Layers"
8. Send to archos and apply as wallpaper with the Crop Wallpaper app and use the "Overall" button.

This is all for today. Next We'll see if we can do something with extending the background instead of cropping it.

Reserved for future use

Reserved for future use 2

martinjh99 said:

Worked fine for landscape But when I turn it portrait there is a black bar at the bottom - How do I get it to fill in that black space??

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

There is no way to do both landscape and portrait at the same time. So you have to choose.

nikokroko said:

Thanks wdl1908. It will be difficult for me to explain because of my poor english. But with your settings and my A70it it didn't (the image was too high). So I have set the top of my image at 183px and the bottom at 644px and now it's perfect. Maybe someone with skills could check those values cause I'm a newbie.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

If you attach your original wallpaper I'll look at it to see what the best method is.

nikokroko said:

So this is my actual wallpapaper. In landscape I see everything of the middle layer and not the 2 others (normal). And in portrait I don't see the face of the guy on the first layer. But this is not important cause those layers are just there to fill the blanks in portrait mode.

The original picture was found on socwall and was 2500*1324px

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Very nice wallpaper. I usually don't bother with the portrait mode as long as the landscape mode is shown correctly. I would just cut out the middle part and use that to fit into the portrait visible part of the template.