Note that the size can be bigger OR smaller than the default size, and that there are flags in the distribution and the Info.plist that control where the image is displayed and whether it's stretched to fit. Be sure to test out with 10.3 and 10.4 to see what actually happens. It can be surprising.
In iLife 06, the image is actually quite tall, so when the installer window "grows" (if you have a lot of drives, or if you resize the window manually), more of the graphic is revealed. The artist and I had a chuckle over that.
I usually start with a white background and brightly colored objects, then set the alpha (transparency) of the non-white things to 30% or so. That usually looks OK. Then I save to a file called "background.tif" that has an alpha channel, no colorsync, LZW compression, and Mac byte order.
The compression means that even though the file is TIFF, it's usually under 200K, so there's not much concern about disk space.
On Feb 22, 2006, at 5:44 PM, Christopher Ryan wrote: The standard size is 620x440.
You would be best to avoid incorporating any of the look and feel of the Installer app into the background as it could change in the future (ie. Don't include Aqua stripes, don't place image data around the Continue, Go Back button, as those can move).
It would also be best to ensure the image looks good when the Installer window is resizable (when using a 10.4 and later package). PackageMaker should allow you to try out the image and image attributes.
Chris
Hello, What should be the size of a custom background? Anything to watch out for when using custom backgrounds?
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