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In the previous post on this site I mentioned about 99 Amazing iPhone Wallpapers, most of the wallpapers were specifically designed to be iPhone wallpapers. In this post I want to show you how easy it is to turn any image on your Mac, into one designed and set up correctly for the iPhone. This tutorial is designed to take a picture of your favourite car or family member and crop it to the right size.

The first step is to pick an image which is suitable for use on an iPhone’s desktop. Take one that is relatively simple and isn’t to complex. On the small screen the complex detail gets pushed out and you usually end up with a smudge. As well as this also take one that doesn’t have any exact dimensions such as circles or proportions that need to stay exact. The method used can distort the images slightly.

Once as you have found your image, using the select tool in Preview draw a rectangle about 1.5 times as high as it is wide. We are not worried about the exact length, this is sorted later, just the ration between the sides. Use a sample size to judge the correct size. Once you have done this copy the image to the clipboard.

The next step is too make sure the sizes are correct. Go to Tools > Adjust Size. Uncheck “Scale Proportionally” and change the dimensions to 320 x 480. If the final image looks bad, go back to your source image and copy a new section. At this point you can save your image and upload it to your phone or play around with the other tools in Preview.

This process takes seconds to complete. You could probably create a script to do the resizing for you. Its a lot quicker than using Photoshop or a similar program.

If you have some really cool wallpapers which you made using this method, please leave a comment below.