The Pixels By Paul  apps have many, many premium photographs not included on this website.   To find all the Pixels By Paul  apps, simply search the iTunes App Store for "pbp".  Here are the apps in this series, at the time of this writing (June, 2011):

Tap on them here to open them in iTunes.  All these apps include a user guide.  Below is an example: the user guide for The Desert Southwest in Ultra-HD app.    Tap the movie below to view a YouTube movie demonstrating another one of our Ultra-HD apps, Colorado in Ultra-HD.

The Desert Southwest in Ultra-HD

1. About The Desert Southwest Ultra-HD  App

This app contains 140 ultra high definition images of the Desert Southwest.  Here you'll see original, premium images from parks of Utah, including Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley, Goblin Valley, Capitol Reef, Zion and Bryce.  You'll witness sunrise at the sand dunes of Death Valley, and at its famous Zabriskie Point.  Then a glorious sunrise at Monument Valley's Totem's.  You'll explore the slot canyons of Page, Arizona and its exquisite horseshoe bend.  You'll experience the magic of Canyon de Chelly and its White House Ruins.  You'll wander the glorious Coyote Buttes area, with its amazing swirling rock fins.  You'll ride high over Utah's Escalante.  You'll drive Nevada's Extra-Terrestrial Highway during an exciting storm.    And more.

Many of these photographs are available only in this app.   These photos have never before been offered in such high definition.

This is one of a series of Ultra-HD Pixels By Paul apps.  Why "Ultra-HD"?  Because including exceptionally high definition images offers the user several advantages over the usual screen sized imagery in most apps:

1. •You see much more detail in these images.
   

2. •You can select parts of an image to use as wallpaper in any orientation, without sacrificing sharpness or detail.
   

3. •Many of these images look great, and make fascinating wallpaper, when the are stretched or squished to fit your device's screen.  This can be done without sacrificing sharpness or detail, due to the ultra high definition of these images.
   

4. •Slideshows are also more fun because they include scrolling across large images.
   

This series introduces ultra high definition to Apple apps, and continues the Pixels By Paul tradition of bringing innovative new features to your Apple devices. 

This app is designed to entertain, with its fun flipping browsing interface (see Section 3 below), and with its slideshows (Section 8).  It can also produce lovely wallpaper for your devices (Sections 9 - 12), such as:

Figure 1:   Lock and Home Screen Wallpaper Examples

A unique feature of this overall series of Pixels By Paul apps is their ability to size wallpaper to fit within wallpaper safe areas.  Safe areas are the areas in the Lock and Home Screens which are not blocked by the status bar, date/time bar, unlock slider, and dock, as shown in Figure 2 below.  Pictures can be fitted to safe areas while keeping their original aspect (the ratio of height to width is maintained), or pictures can be stretched or squeezed to completely fill the safe areas.  You can do this with the pictures in this app, and you can do this with your own pictures (see Section 12 below).  Here are examples of the latter, where this app was used on pictures from my personal Photos library, squeezing them so they fit within the safe areas:

Figure 2:   Lock and Home Screen Safe Areas with squeezed photos from my personal Photos library

The safe areas of iPad Home and Lock screens, in vertical and horizontal orientation, and on the iPhone, are all different in their dimensions and placements.  Even if you bother to figure out the exact pixel dimensions and placements of each of the 6 safe areas, making safe area wallpaper isn't something you'd want to do manually for very many images.

This app requires no internet connection to run.  Everything you need is included inside this application.  And it's a universal app!  Run it on your iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, all for one low price.

2. Tips for Using this Help Screen

You can use two finger stretches and pinches to expand and contract the text and images here.  Double-tap images to enlarge them to fill the screen.  Double-tap them again to return to fit-text-to-screen, and eliminate horizontal scrolling. 

Double-tap enlarged text here to return it to fit-text-to-screen. 

Especially on the iPhone and iPod Touch, it's easier to read this text in landscape orientation.

3. How to Browse The Desert Southwest in Ultra-HD  Images

This app opens to the Help Screen, from which you accessed this How To help screen.  To browse the images in this app four at a time, simply tap the Browse button at the bottom of the Help Screen:

Figure 3:   Browse button

This will take you to the Browse Screen, shown here in vertical (aka "portrait") and horizontal (aka "landscape") orientation:

Figure 4:  Browse Screen (landscape and portrait) - normal mode

Here you can view all the images in this app.  The upper right corner of this screen tells you which page you are on.  You can go to the next page by tapping the Next  button or swiping to the right in the image area.  Similarly, you can go the previous page by tapping the Prev button or swiping to the left in the image area.  By tapping buttons or swiping rapidly, you can page really fast.

The second button from the left, on the bottom row, is the Stretch ➠ Normal  button.  This button is only found in the ultra-HD series of apps, since stretching (especially in the Full Screen view - Sec. 4) requires ultra high resolution images.  Tapping the Stretch ➠ Normal  button when its label is "Stretch" changes its label to "Normal", and stretches the images shown in this view so that each fills its quadrant, as shown here:

Figure 5:  Browse Screen (landscape and portrait) - stretch mode

This is called stretch mode.  This will give you an idea of what each image looks like stretched.  Note that rotating your device will cause different stretching (Figs. 4 - 5).

Tapping the Stretch ➠ Normal button again changes its label back to "Stretch" and resizes each image shown to its actual, normal aspect ratio.   This is called normal mode (Fig. 4).

As you navigate from page to page in this Browse screen, the mode does not change unless you change it.

This app contains photos in both horizontal and vertical orientations.  When viewing horizontal photos in normal mode with the device in vertical orientation, the photos look rather small on the browse screen.  Similarly, when viewing vertical photos in normal mode with the device in horizontal orientation, the photos look rather small.    For the best viewing experience, rotate your device to match the orientation of the displayed photos (see Fig. 4).  Or, in this ultra-HD series of apps, push the Stretch button to enter stretch mode and stretch each of the four images to fill their quadrants (see Fig. 5).

Slideshows are available on this screen.  Tapping the Slide Show button  near the bottom right corner of this screen will enable you to start a slideshow.  Stop the slideshow by tapping on any picture or button, except the Stretch and Normal buttons.  You can use the Stretch and Normal buttons during the show, to switch modes.

You can return to the Help Screen by tapping the Help button at the bottom of the Browse Screen.

4. How to Enlarge a Photo

Tap or pinch a photo on the Browse Screen to enlarge it, or tap the Enlarge button at the bottom of the screen to enlarge the photo in the upper left.  This will take you to the Full Screen view, where photos are viewed one at a time:

Figure 6:  Full Screen view (landscape and portrait) - normal mode

Tap the photo to hide the buttons, for an unobstructed view of the photo.  Tap again to show the buttons.

The upper right corner displays which of the 140 photos you are viewing. 

5. How to Stretch and Expand a Photo

The button in the upper right corner of the Full Screen view (Fig. 6) is the Stretch ➠ Full ➠ Normal  button.  Each time you tap this button, its caption cycles from Stretch to Full to Normal, and then back to Stretch, and the mode of this screen changes accordingly.  This button is only found in the ultra-HD series of apps, since stretching and expansion to "full" require ultra high resolution images.  Let me explain.

When you first enter the Full Screen view, this button is labeled Stretch, and the display shows the normal view of the photo, as in Figure 6.  This is called normal mode.

If you now tap the Stretch button, the display changes as follows, and the button is re-labeled Full:

Figure 7:  Stretched view of an image (landscape and portrait) - stretch mode

The image has been stretched to fill the entire screen.  This is called stretch mode.  See how the image will stretch differently if you rotate your device?  Many users have been surprised to see just how appealing some of the photos in this app are when stretched.

If the photos in this app were not ultra-HD, then their stretched versions would be blurry, unsharp, and rather unpleasant.   But with ultra-HD images, they are sharp and attractive. 

If you tap this Full button (Fig. 7) the photo is expanded, without stretching, so that it fills the entire display and beyond.  This is called full mode.  Typically, only part of the photo will then be visible, as shown here:

Figure 8:  Full view of an image, here showing a cropped section - full mode

As the image is first displayed, it will be automatically scrolled so that you can see the whole picture.  (You can tap to stop scrolling if you like.)  Once scrolling has stopped, you can simply drag your finger across the image to scroll it manually.  Rotating your device will give you a differently sized and cropped version of the full image, as shown above.

As you can see, the label of the button changed to Normal.  If you tap it, you will return to the normal mode display in Figure 6 above.

If the photos in this app were not ultra-HD, then their expanded, full displays would be blurry, unsharp, and rather unpleasant.   But with ultra-HD images, they are sharp and attractive.  To see the most detail, or achieve the most stretching, hold your device in its portrait orientation (since most of the pictures here are landscape).

You can also switch from Normal to Stretch to Full by simply pinching (in or out) the photo.  This is handy if you have hidden the buttons for an unobstructed view of the photo.

If the photo being displayed matches the dimensions of the display, then the  Stretch ➠ Full ➠ Normal button will be hidden because it would have no effect.

6. How to Navigate on the Full View Screen

You can go to the next photo by tapping the Next  button or swiping to the right in the image area.  Similarly, you can go the previous photo by tapping the Prev button or swiping to the left in the image area. 

Note that swiping the fully expanded photo (full mode) only scrolls it, and does not navigate to another image.  In this mode, you can go to the next image by using a two finger tap, so that you don't have to show buttons to advance.

Tap the BACK to Browse button to return to the Browse screen (Fig. 4).

7. How to Get Photo Information

Tap the dimmed Info button in the upper left corner of the Full Screen view (Fig. 6 - 8) to show information about the displayed photo.  It will appear in the upper left corner of the screen.  Tap the Info button again to hide this information.

8. How to Start a Slideshow

You can view slideshows on the Browse screen (Figs. 4 - 5), as discussed in Section 3 above.

To view a slideshow of full screen images, tap the Slideshow button in the lower left corner of the Full Screen view (Fig. 6 - 8), and select a slideshow interval (the time between showing the current and next photo).   Tap a photo during the show to stop the slideshow. 

During the slide show, images will all show in the mode (normal, stretch, or full) you have selected.  In full mode, images larger than the display will be automatically scrolled as a part of the slideshow.

9. How to Make Wallpaper

If you want horizontal wallpaper for your iPad (the iPhone and iPod Touch only use portrait wallpaper), tap the Save button in the Full Screen view (Figs. 6 - 8) while your device is horizontal.  Similarly, if you want vertical wallpaper, tap the Save button while your device is vertical.  Images are saved to your device's Photos library.

On the iPad, images are saved to the Saved Photos Album.   On the iPhone and iPod Touch, this is called the Camera Roll Album.  There you can assign images as wallpaper, or share them with friends.   Apple does not currently allow third party apps, like The Desert Southwest in Ultra-HD, to directly assign wallpaper.  Hence you must go through the Photos app for this, at least for now.

If you save while in stretch or full mode, the image saved will precisely fill your device's entire display.  Such images typically work well as wallpaper. 

The imagery in this wallpaper will likely be obstructed by the various controls on the Lock and Home Screens.  For many of these images, this is not a problem, but for some it is.  The next section explains how to make wallpaper that will not  be obstructed.

10. How to Make Unobstructed Wallpaper

Tap the Make Wallpaper button in the bottom right corner of the Full Screen view (see Figs. 6 - 8) to access the Make Wallpaper screen:

Figure 9:   Make Wallpaper Screen

Tap the photo in the upper left to make Lock Screen wallpaper.  Tap the photo in the upper right to make Home Screen wallpaper.  Rotate the iPad to make wallpaper for the other orientation.  (iPhone and iPod Touch devices use only vertical wallpaper.)  These wallpapers exactly match your device's display pixel dimensions, with the non-black  imagery reduced in size to fit perfectly in the safe areas. 

Wallpaper is saved to your Photos app library, as before.

On the Home Screen, your app icons and folders will still obstruct Home Screen wallpaper imagery.  To minimize this, you can leave just one or two apps (or app folders) on your last Home Screen, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 above. 

11. How to Make STRETCHED Unobstructed Wallpaper

Notice that the picture does not quite fill the safe areas in Figure 9 above, almost but not quite.  Tap the Stretch button in the lower right corner of the Make Wallpaper screen (Fig. 9) to stretch the pictures to fill the Home and Lock Screen safe areas: 

Figure 10:   Stretched Wallpaper

The Stretch button (Fig. 9) changes its label to Normal, and the picture is stretched both horizontally and vertically to fill the safe areas.  Tap the Normal  button if you want to return to the un-stretched photos.

You can then save and use the stretched pictures as described in the previous section. 

12. How to Make Unobstructed Wallpaper of YOUR PHOTOS

Tap the Your Photo button in the lower left corner of the Make Wallpaper screen (Figs. 9 - 10) to select one of your photos from your Photos app library:

Figure 11: Choosing one of your photos

Figure 2 above shows examples where this app was used on pictures from my personal Photos library, squeezing them so they fit within the safe areas.

If the image you choose is too large, it could cause this app to crash.  In that case, you will be alerted and asked to choose a different image.  This will also happen if the image you choose is too small.  Typical usage is unlikely to run into these limits, as you are unlikely to want to make wallpaper out of extremely wide panoramas or out of images smaller than your devices screen size.

Once you've selected an image, follow the procedures in the previous section to make and use wallpaper.

13. How to Buy Prints

All of the photos in this app were taken with high-end professional equipment (24 mega-pixel Nikon D3x, with Zeiss and exotic Nikon lenses), and hence contain stunning color and detail.  The iPad and any other smallish device can only give you a glimpse of how fantastic the actual large prints look.  You can order just a print, and mount it yourself, or you can order a finished DuraPLAQ-ed product ready to hang.  DuraPLAQ mounts the print onto wood board and laminates it for protection.   These plaques have bevelled edges, with 16 different edge colors / textures available. 

Key advantages of the DuraPLAQ process are that, unlike other mounting and framing methods, the print lays absolutely flat (no waves or ripples), and its laminate almost totally eliminates reflection and glare.  No glass cover is needed.  And you can wipe the laminate clean with a soft cloth, and even use windex to clean it.

To order, contact the author at Paul@PixelsByPaul.com.  Discounted pricing is as follows:

Print Size  Print Price  Mounted Print Price

12" x 18"   $35  $  85

18" x 27"   $65  $125

24" x 36"   $95  $175

Prints are made on the highest quality, latest technology fine art printing equipment, papers and inks (Epson 7900, Epson Premium Lustre paper, Epson UltraChrome HDR ink).  Prints are 100 year archival.

14. Other Pixels By Paul Apps

To find all the Pixels By Paul  apps, simply search the iTunes App Store for "pbp".  Here are the apps in this series, at the time of this writing:

Tap on them here to open them in iTunes. 

15. Copyright

All photos in this app are copyrighted ©2011 by Paul L. Richman of Pixels By Paul.  Purchase of this app licenses the purchaser to view these photos in the app, use them as wallpaper on owned devices, and send them to friends via email.  These photos are transparently watermarked with the Pixels By Paul copyright, and tracked on the internet.  Email recipients of these photos may only view them, use them as wallpaper, and send them on via email.  No other use is permitted under this license.  For any other use of this imagery, contact Paul@PixelsByPaul.com.