Display Background Image across multiple monitors

Posted on March 19th, 2007 by Jason

I am a multi-monitor Windows Vista user ever since I got hooked on multiple monitor at work. Two monitors make doing multiple tasks at one so much easier.  If I am working on an article or trying to be creative in Photoshop, everything is just much easier because I always have multiple applications open at once.  One feature that I wish I had as soon as I purchased my two monitors and hooked them up was the ability to stretch my wallpaper across both monitors.  I wanted to use a very large and wide photo as my background that would like cool displayed across both monitors. Something like the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco or a cityscape.
 
After installing and uninstalling Ultra Mon, a third-party shareware utility that I heard is great for multi-monitors, I wanted a easier solution and not something that I had to run in the background.  A few weeks go by until I accidentally stumble across how to natively stretch your wallpaper across multiple monitors.
 
Follow these steps in to display a large image across multiple monitors:

  1. Right click on the background and select Personalization.
  2. Click on Desktop Background
  3. Select a background image that is at least as wide as the combined resolution of both of your monitors.  For Example, I have two 19” monitors that have a resolution of 1280×1024.  I need an image of 2560×1024 or greater so that it can be displayed across both monitors.
  4. Next, this is the step that most users would never even think about trying: Select the Tile picture positioning option as shown below. This is the only option that will display your background image across multiple monitors.
  5. Hit OK

Your background image is now displayed across both monitors instead of having the same image displayed on both monitors.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 11:57 am and is filed under Windows Vista, Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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28 Responses to “Display Background Image across multiple monitors”

  1. EntreGeeks on 19 Mar 2007 at 8:15 pm #

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  2. Dark Elite on 27 Jun 2007 at 9:28 pm #

    Thanks so much!

    I just got an old CRT to have my music, MSN etc on while I do full screen things and/or work in Photoshop etc. I had a bunch of dual-screen wallpapers, but couldn’t figure it out. I was pretty angry, since I really wanted to use these awesome background.

    You totally made my day. Thanks so much.

  3. davblos on 30 Jun 2007 at 2:57 am #

    doesnt work for me . . . :(

  4. marius on 07 Aug 2007 at 7:30 am #

    Doesn’t work for me either :-(

  5. Andrew on 13 Aug 2007 at 8:19 pm #

    Stupid Windows XP…works great for me

  6. hobo343 on 27 Aug 2007 at 1:15 pm #

    hiding in plain view — thanks for the tip

  7. Chris on 23 Oct 2007 at 10:30 am #

    I have the opposite problem, and I don’t know how I caused it. My wallpaper is complete on both monitors. But my icons, taskbar, etc is only available on one monitor at a time. I’ve been through all my “Display” options in my Control Panel. I want identical images, icons, etc on both monitors simultaneously, but cannot make it happen.

  8. adrien on 23 Apr 2008 at 9:02 am #

    thx a lot :)
    it works for win xp as well…

  9. ORA on 28 May 2008 at 12:31 am #

    Not sure what ‘Personlization’ is. Vista maybe.

    Select your image and open in any imaging software.
    There is usually an option to ‘Resize’ the image. Make sure your calculations are correct for 2 monitors width(x)heigth. (1680×1050 will equate to 3360×1050)
    File –> Save As (something you know, maybe with the size of the image.

    For XP;
    MB3 on the background
    Properties
    Desktop tab
    [Browse] to the folder location
    Select the image that you resized
    Position = Tile (otherwise it will center and squash the image to one monitor size, but display on both as individual images.)
    Apply

    Now your resized image is displayed across 2 monitors.
    YAY!!

    ORA

  10. Buzzardo on 25 Jun 2008 at 8:40 pm #

    Legend! cheers! :-)

  11. Larry on 13 Jul 2008 at 6:04 am #

    WORKS PERFECT! The dual trick you gave by selecting “tile” works perfect! Thanks. I had to double the size in photoshop, for 1900 x 1200 widescreen res.. to 53.333 x 16.667 (exact size for double width), then dragged in my image and looks cool! Thanks! Once I selected tile, instantly showed up.

  12. Rafael on 28 Jul 2008 at 10:05 am #

    It didn’t work with me… My environment is Windows Vista Enterprise x64 with SP1, graphics card XFX GeForce 8800GS and graphics driver 175.19_geforce_winvista_64bit_english_whql.

    Any idea of the reason?

  13. Pix on 01 Aug 2008 at 11:54 pm #

    Doesn’t work in Vista (across 3 monitors). TRIED MYRIAD COMBINATIONS WITHOUT ANY SUCCESS

  14. Anonymous on 15 Dec 2008 at 2:46 pm #

    Works great on XP, thanks.

  15. meetfriend on 29 Jan 2009 at 6:00 pm #

    Thanks a lot!!!!!

    Finally I have a two diffrent pictures on my 2 monitors. As you mentioned, except Selecting the Tile picture positioning option, I had tried everything else. Works on Windows XP too!

  16. Guy on 16 Feb 2009 at 10:22 am #

    Anyone having issues with this who has Internet Explorer 8 (RC1) installed – I found that to be why mine stopped working!

  17. Bob on 19 May 2009 at 7:08 am #

    Works perfectly for me on Win 7

    This problem has been driving me nuts up to now!

    Thanks a million!

  18. warb on 01 Jun 2009 at 8:04 pm #

    worked for me, thanks for the great tip, who would have thought!…. no need to crappy additional wallpaper software!..

  19. nanobit on 29 Jul 2009 at 2:22 am #

    ok for these peoples wher it doesn’t work -> change the display order to the following:

    -> first Monitor=left Monitor=Primary Monitor
    -> second Monitor=right Monitor
    -> and so on ….

    Sorry for my bad english …

  20. Amy on 22 Sep 2009 at 12:06 pm #

    Sadly, now I just have the same image twice on each monitor.

  21. J. Janssens on 09 Nov 2009 at 4:57 am #

    I would never had thought Tile was the solution. Thanks a lot for this tip.

  22. Jeff on 10 Nov 2009 at 2:03 am #

    Guys, the image HAS TO BE A BITMAP. I used JPG and it would not work.

  23. Craig B on 09 Jan 2010 at 2:27 pm #

    It worked damn it, I can’t believe it.
    I use windows 7 and so the process was a little different but using common sence I came out with the correct outcome. An image 2560×1024 that perfectly steched between two monitors. I would never have thought of it.
    Cool, Thanks

  24. Shar on 03 Feb 2010 at 6:39 pm #

    I did this at work with Vista and I noticed something else…

    It doesn’t work if you right click on an image (file or on a web browser) and choose Set As Desktop Background. Doing this saves a smaller scaled down copy of the image in one of the windows folders rather than the full size image. The end result of this is having an image that tiles across the two screens, but because it isn’t large enough you can actually see the tiles and will see multiples of the image.

    You have to go through
    Personalization – Choose a Desktop Background
    and navigate to where you saved the image.
    Tiled is the setting that works, if your image is large enough.

    To figure out the minimum size of the image you require:
    Personalization – Display Settings – Add the horizontal resolution of your monitors together. i.e.
    Monitor 1: 1440 x 900
    Monitor 2: 1600 x 900
    Minimum size of image: 3040 x 900.

    And… jpg worked just fine for me too.

  25. Scott on 05 Feb 2010 at 9:00 am #

    I tried this on my setup and it almost works, but not quite. I have one monitor in landscape orientation and one monitor in Portrait orientation. The image is more than large enough to fill both screens completely.

    On the Landscape Screen, the image displays correctly, but on the Portrait screen, it cuts off the bottom half inch of the image and sticks it on the top of the screen instead for some unknown reason…

    I could figure out exactly how many pixels are being cut and manually edit each Background in my list to compensate, but it would take a long time and it seems like there should be some easy way to fix this.

  26. TerryA on 05 Feb 2010 at 6:58 pm #

    last comment worked for me using vista 64

  27. Anonymous on 27 Feb 2010 at 2:06 pm #

    Wow Thats soo cool…. and definitely wouldnt have thought of doing that :) thanks

  28. Dave on 05 Mar 2010 at 2:40 pm #

    THANK YOU!!!!! drived me crazy! :) )
    Works perfect in Windows 7 with 2 monitors

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