How to Change the Login Picture on Mac OS X Leopard

The standard login picture for Mac OS X Leopard

The standard login picture on your Mac is fine, but what if you want to replace it with a picture of your kids, dog or whatever? Being able to customize things to make them the way you want is one of the reasons you became a Mac user in the first place. Keep reading to learn how to change the login picture on your Mac to any image your heart desires.

Instructions

1. 

   Navigate to the "root" of your Mac's hard drive. This will be called "Macintosh HD" or some other customized name you may have given your comupter's internal drive. In your open Finder window, navigate to "System/Library/CoreServices."

2. 

   Find the file "DefaultDesktop.jpg" in the "CoreServices" folder. This is the current image file of the login screen on your Mac. You will be replacing this file with your new image file. It's a good idea to make a backup of this default login image file, in case you ever want to go back to using the original image. Simply drag and drop the file to the desktop to make a copy of the "DefaultDesktop.jpg" image.

3. 

   Locate the new file you wish to use in place of the default login image file. Change the name of the file to "DefaultDesktop.jpg" (without the quotes).

4. 

   Drag the new file you just renamed "DefaultDesktop.jpg" to the open "CoreServices" folder. Release the mouse button to copy the file to the new location.

5. 

   Wait to be presented with a standard Mac warning dialog box, which will ask if you want to overwrite and replace the old "DefaultDesktop.jpg" file. Click the "Replace" button.

6. 

   Enter your userame and password; the new image file will overwrite the old/default "DefaultDesktop.jpg" file. The next time you restart or log out and back into your computer, you will be presented with the new login desktop picture.

Tips & Warnings

• You can replace your login picture with any jpg file. Higher-resolution images will give you better results. The default picture size is 2560 x 1600.

• You will be logging in as an administrator and changing system components. Only replace the "DefaultDesktop.jpg" image file; don't attempt to change or rename any other system components in the "System/Library/CoreServices" folder.