Windows 10: Desktop Background Selections Help

I got to playing with Personalizing the Desktop Background (came with the OEM light blue with some wispy clouds) and just picking on each of the four alternate selections offered, I've lost the original picture. No longer five options, now just the four that were shown as alternatives. How can I find and get back to that original background picture? When "someone" comes in here to see this, she's going to be on my case. A good chance I'll never hear the end of it. Help.

:)

 

Selecting Desktop Background

Yes, this works. Thanks!

You can point-and-click your way to a solution too, but Win 10 hides this for no good reason that I can see.

From right-click -> Personalize, set Background to Picture, then under "Choose your picture", Browse. This pops up the usual file browsing dialog, but you have to know where Windows stores its Theme images, and it's non-trivial and essentially hidden by
Msft's choice of what you see in the Explorer navigation pane.

You need to start from your home folder (C:\Users\me, say, which isn't pinned by default in the navigation pane and can require starting at C:... Sheesh), then navigate into the AppData folder, which is a system folder and hidden by default -- you may need
to flick the "hide system folders" switch in Explorer somewhere. Themes are stored in the folder:

C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

and in each theme folder is a DesktopBackground folder, e.g.:

C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\matrix\DesktopBackground

That's where the individual jpg images are stored. Select the one you want and presto. You might want to pin the folder path to your Explorer navigation pane for next time...

I know there's a general move in OS design towards "users don't need to worry about the details of files, folders etc. -- everything's done for you through apps" -- except that it's not, and the file/folder paradigm is still the way people think -- not only
because it's what we're used to but also because it's simple, powerful and intuitive.

 

Selecting Desktop Background

I wanted to select certain slides from a theme. Your answer did exactly what I wanted. THANKS!!!

 

Hello Clayton,

If it helps, the default background images included with Windows are located in the folders in the C:\Windows\Web folder.

 

AH HA! You've saved me. I appreciate the help on such a trivial thing. Thank you.