I have decided to make my own tutorial on how to make proper wallpapers in 1024 x 1024 pixels resolution for the Apple iPad and “iPad 2″. The iPad is a great tool to show off your images and if you want to do so – you can use your own wallpapers. But to get it right from the start it is important important to understand how the iPad handle wallpapers.
Reading the manual you can see the iPad has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixel. However, one of the smart features of the iPad is that it can be used both horizontal and vertical. This means that when you turn the iPad from horizontal to vertical orientation, it automatically rotates the icons and wallpaper to match the orientation. That is all it does — it simply rotate the wallpaper!
From an image point of view this is brilliant because the wallpaper, if made correctly, will always look nice and sparkly!
But if the screen size is 1024 x 768 pixel or 768 x 1024 pixel depending on how you hold the iPad how big should a proper iPad wallpaper be? It should be square, exactly 1024 x 1024 pixels! Then your wallpaper will look nice however you turn your iPad.
I you look at the next image it will become clear that however you hold you iPad you will newer see the whole wallpaper.
Click image to download a Adobe Photoshop iPad Wallpaper Template
If you click on the image above you can download a perfect Wallpaper Template in Adobe Photoshop (PSD) format.
Having this template ready you can easily create and test your new wallpapers without awful surprises when showing of to you friends.
So in short you simply export you favourite images in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution and place it in the Adobe Photoshop template to see how it will be cropped on the iPad.
You can export the wallpapers in whatever program you use to manage you images. I prefer to do this directly from Adobe Lightroom but you can use Apple iPhoto or Aperture as well.
Finally, you can have a look at the wallpapers from my own personal photo collection. Feel free to download and use it on your iPad or iPhone.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please share it as a comment!
Thanks,
Martin
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[...] to development and we are getting closer to the big announcement it become clear that the standard 1024 x 1024px wallpapers will change to something bigger as the iPad 3 (according to rumors) will feature a 2048×1536 [...]