The most dramatic change in desktop appearance can be achieved through simply setting a new wallpaper. Much like a new haircut, this simple alteration can completely alter the style of your workspace resulting in a different mindset while working.

The first step to finding a new wallpaper is determining what resolution your screen is. If you don’t know off the top of your head, you can find out easily. On XP, you can achive this by going to your desktop, right clicking, selecting Properties, navigate to the Display Properties dialog box, click the Settings tab. Look under screen resolution and note the number. Microsoft provides a visual guide HERE.

On Vista the process is similar but a bit simpler. Go to your desktop, right click, select Personalize, click Display Settings, and note the resolution. You can follow Microsoft’s guide HERE. Once you know your resolution you’ll what to find an image of the same or larger resolution.

The key to finding a good wallpaper is finding large, high-quality images. Many of these images have been collected and posted to websites that have the sole purpose of providing wallpapers. The best site, in my opinion, to find wallpaper is Social Wallpapering. Social Wallpapering has user contributed images that are voted up by visitors ensuring you see the best pictures first. They allow you to sort images into widescreen, standard, and dual monitor setups and narrow further by generic categories.

Similar to Social Wallpapering but more generic is Deviant Art. Deviant Art is an art website that has a large wallpaper area. This site tends to offer more art and graphic design than many other similar websites.

InterfaceLIFT is another fantastic wallpaper repository that allows you to sort by resolution as well as a myriad of other options. This site is generally considered the definitive wallpaper resource.

If you know you want an image of something specific, like doorbells, then your best bet may be to use Google Image Search with their newly introduced “imagesize:” tag. Just type “imagesize:”, then WITHOUT any space your resolution (mine would be 1680×1050), and finally your desired subject. So if I was searching for doorbell related images that are 1680×1050 I would type “imagesize:1680×1050 doorbell“. Just be careful as many of these images are copyrighted and while they may be fine for personal use you’re better off safe than sorry.

There are of course other options like Flickr and similar but the above are my favorite resources.

Once you’ve downloaded your new wallpaper, proceed to swamp out your old desktop for your beautiful new image. If you’re not sure how to change it, refer to HERE for XP and HERE for Vista.

[via ViaTorci.com]