Personalized Picture Not Fully Adopted

I want to use the image of trees at night, shown at the left among the five displayed:



But although I have clicked on that image of trees at night, it does not display as the large (selected) one at the top of this screenshot.

If I click one of the other (Windows-supplied) images, that other one does display as the selected one. So in this regard the problem seems limited to the custom (tree) image.

Bizarrely, on reboot, the background is none of the above. It is a solid color (orange) that I selected previously. Going back into Personalization and clicking the preferred (tree) image does restore it to the desktop - but now the orange solid color is the one prominently displayed as the selected background in Personalization.

If I select one of the Windows-supplied images, I have none of these problems after rebooting.

My custom (tree) image is stored on drive D, which is not available immediately at bootup. Does Win11 not store a copy of the custom (tree) image on drive C?

This can happen if the picture file does not match the size of your screen.
Check In settings>system>display what is your display resolution? For example, mine is 2560 x 1440 (the number of dots that make up the image)
For my background image to be perfectly clear, the image file has to be the same size in pixels so my background image file is also 2560 x 1440..
If I use a background image file too much smaller than this, it will be blurry and distorted when it is stretched out to fit the screen.

raywood said:

Does Win11 not store a copy of the custom (tree) image on drive C?

Click to expand...

• System default themes: Located in %WinDir%\Resources\Themes
• User themes: Located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes or %SystemDrive%\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

I

All of those images in your screenshot other than the trees are in C:\Windows\Web
Maybe place your image in one of those folders then select it.

try opening the image in windows photo viewer or the photos app, right click > set as desktop background. see if it will apply that way

raywood said:

My custom (tree) image is stored on drive D, which is not available immediately at bootup. Does Win11 not store a copy of the custom (tree) image on drive C?

Click to expand...

After your custom background is accepted, Windows caches it as a Transcoded wallpaper in your AppData\Local. That's a fancy term for the final stretched/fitted background that's often re-encoded at a lower JPEG quality value to speed up loading time.

If you have W11 desktop Stickers enabled, those are overlaid on the Transcoded background.

Can you upload the image and tell me your screen size so I can A. Check B. Enlarge to suit, if possible.
You could also try browsing for the image again. And of corse, importantly, copy the image from the D drive to your Photos directory then select it again would be a plus.

Thanks for the suggestions. Guided by the monitor resolution stated in Win-I > System > Display, I resized the image to fit. That, and storing it in C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper, seem to have solved most of the problem. Win-I > Personalization > Background does still display an orange rectangle as the existing background. In that sense, Win11 appears to have a bug.