Tutorial #2

Have you ever heard the term, “screen resolution” and wonder what it is and what it means? Well…. You’re in luck! Today, we will cover what screen resolution is and how to change it.

If you have ever zoomed in on a photo and saw what looked like tiny little blocks, those little blocks are called, “pixels”. A pixel is a single point in an image. Each individual pixel carries the color information that helps render the overall image.

Think of it like this, on most monitor screens, the resolution is usually set at 1028wx768h. This means there are 1,028 pixels per inch on the width of the screen and 768 pixels per inch in height. If you increase the number of pixels, you can view more things on the screen, as an example, a large photo will fit inside the screen. If you decrease the screen resolution or, reduce the number of pixels per inch, that same large photo, won’t completely fit on the screen. Remember this, the larger the screen resolution, the smaller your icons on the desktop will be and the smaller the screen resolution, the larger the icons on your desktop will be.

So how do we change the screen resolution one way or the other? Follow along and in no time, you’ll be a resolution guru.

There are several ways to access the display settings for your monitor screen:

  1. Click on the “Start” button.
  2. Left click on “Control Panel”.
  3. Left click on “Display”.
  4. Choose the “settings” tab at the top right of the “display properties” box.
  5. Look for the slider bar near the middle left of this screen. Left mouse click and hold the mouse button down and move the slider either left, to make the screen smaller and the icons larger or, to the right, to make the screen larger and your icons smaller. After you make your changes.
  6. Left click on the “Apply” button, then the “OK”, button. (you may see a dialog box asking if you want to keep these changes, select yes or, ok.)

This is the fastest, down and dirty way is to access the display properties screen, is to find a spot on your screen where there are no icons and:

  1. Right mouse click.
  2. Choose properties at the bottom of the pop up menu.
  3. Follow the same steps above from #4 on.