Our masterful web master creates these wallpapers for each of our weekly captioned releases (these are the images we release each week with some commentary written by the science team). He picks out an interesting area from each image and produces custom cutouts in different sizes. We provide these extra files because we think the images are so beautiful, everyone should have them on their desktop. Because they’re all done by hand, though, we unfortunately don’t have the resources to make these special products for every single image. For example, most of the 1,642 images we released in our big December PDS release don’t have wallpapers. However, you can make your own, and here’s how!

I make my own wallpapers all the time, so I can see the images that I planned. You can make your own, too – it’s really easy. They’re basically just screenshots, zoomed in on a part of the image at high resolution. If you’ve never done that before, here are instructions for one way to do it.

Let’s say you’re enamored with this image of Phlegra Montes (PSP_009308_2295), which was part of our PDS release, but it doesn’t have any wallpapers. There are a few ways to do this. The one we recommend (and the one I personally use) is the IAS Viewer. We’ve talked about this tool quite a few times on this blog, but here’s a short step-by-step in case you’re new to this tool:

1. On the image page, click on JP2 QUICKLOOK (IAS Viewer), and a menu will drop down showing the available products.
2. Click on the product you want.
   • Personally, I like color, but that’s only in the middle of the observation. If you want to see the entire field of view, get the grayscale, which includes all of our red-filter CCDs. Map-projected products will have the image oriented so that North is up – I prefer this because then the shadows appear to my eyes to be in the “right” direction. In this example, I chose IRB color (map projected)
3. You’ll get a popup window asking you to verify the certificate – click Trust.
4. The IAS Viewer will open. Make this as big as you can fit on your screen. Make the image that opened as big as you can fit, too.
5. Zoom (magnifying glass with plus) and pan (scroll bars, hand tool, or Overview map at top left) until you like the view. Don’t forget to re-stretch!
   • The resolution is shown in the bottom of the viewer – 1×8 means it’s eight times reduced, 2x means it’s zoomed in to twice the full resolution, etc.
   • Make sure you zoom in to full-resolution (1×1) at least once, because it’s awesome!



6. Save the view to a JPG file (disk button). It might look something like the one to the right.
7. (optional) Open the JPG file in another application, such as Photoshop or GraphicConverter to do additional stretching or processing. For example, you might want to tweak the color or contrast to your particular taste.
8. Use that file as your wallpaper or screensaver, or both!

Caution: Doing this may lead you to spend WAY too much time looking at beautiful HiRISE images and making wallpaper! You’ll find that you can make many, many unique full-resolution wallpapers out of a single HiRISE image!

Thanks to the webmaster for help in writing this, as well as for all the outstanding wallpapers he’s already produced!

I’ve prepared this ugly table that outlines each of the products now available (excluding the raw EDRs). So reading the columns from left to right: there are three types of “NOMAP” products, two types of lossy “QLOOK” (Quicklook) RDRs, and two types of lossless RDRs.

With that as a reference, now I’ll try to define everything more precisely.

“NOMAP”

Non map-projected product. Always lossy compressed for smaller size and quicker viewing. These are not formal Planetary Data System products; they’re “special”, meaning there is no PDS label and no Software Interface Specification describing them. Available for IRB, RGB and RED.

RDR

Reduced Data Record: reduced in the sense of refined or processed, not raw data. Formal PDS products with accompanying labels and a detailed SIS document describing their format and processing steps. Available both in lossless and quicklook formats for both RED & COLOR.

“QLOOK”

Quicklook: a special product that is a lossy compressed version of the RDR. In a normal RDR, all of the original data is retained. But with a quicklook, some of the highest resolution detail is discarded to make for quicker viewing.

RED

The image obtained by the red-filtered CCDs. It will be over the full swath width, typically data from all ten red CCDs. Covers the visible wavelength band from 550 to 850 nanometers.

IR

Infrared. Covers the near-IR wavelengths from 800-1000 nanometers.

BG

Blue-Green, visible wavelengths from 400-600 nm.

COLOR

A color RDR. It contains data from the IR, BG and center RED ccds. Typically this will be a skinny strip (”center swath”) inside a skinny strip, or as I like to say, the bacon-strip effect.

IRB

An enhanced color NOMAP. It has the same color bands as the RDR: IR, RED and BG.

RGB

An enhanced color NOMAP. It contains only data from the RED and BG. The blue is derived from the difference between the RED and BG. The color bands are RED, BG and the synthetic blue.

EDR

Experiment Data Record, a formal PDS product that is raw uncompressed data with a label header.

Note: we will be working towards making all of these products available for all prior releases.