Friday, July 25, 2008

Preparation for PSP Background Image Modification

You already know how to get your favorite color in the background of your PSP, but wouldn't you rather put your own custom images in there?

Thanks to the great movement of homebrew software for the PSP thriving on the Internet, you can now replace the default color backgrounds on your Version 1.01.5 PSP with pictures of your choosing. Be warned, however, that if you choose to employ this method, there is no turning back. Changing the images is a permanent change. You can replace them later with newer images, if you like, but if you want to return the PSP to its default background set, you're either going to have to do some slightly more advanced hacking to back up the original images before you do this hack, or dig around on the Internet for someone else's copies of the images.

If you have a PSP with Version 2.0 of the firmware, Sony has added a Wallpaper setting to your PSP so that you can do this without any hacking. Simply navigate to Settings Theme Settings, hit the X button, scroll down to Wallpaper, hit the X button again, and choose Use. Navigate to any picture under Photo on your PSP and hit the X button to view the photo. While viewing, hit the Triangle button to bring up the control panel. Navigate to the second control on the top row, "Set as Wallpaper," and hit the X button. The image you were viewing is now the wallpaper image for your PSP.
  • A Sony PSP running Version 1.5 of the firmware until the homebrew community figures a way past the roadblocks Sony put in place in later versions of the firmware, this hack will only work on PSPs running v1.5.
  • PSPersonalizethis is the homebrew app that makes the hack work. The file doesn't have a home page on the Web, but you should find it easily enough in the popular PSP homebrew sites; a quick Google search for "PSPersonalize" should turn it up, and you can also look for a link to the files on the site I've set up to go along with this book (http://www.psphacksthebook.com).
  • A Memory Stick and some way to copy files from your computer to your Memory Stick .
  • Some basic image editing software.
  • Some images.

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