What kind of wallpaper are you using?

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What kind of wallpaper(s) are you using?

Nothing, solid color
17
29%
Photo I've taken, unaltered or nearly unaltered
14
24%
Something I made myself specifically for use as a wallpaper
1
2%
Photo of the web, (nearly) unaltered
15
26%
A wallpaper included with the OS
2
3%
Something else pre-made
7
12%
A wallpaper included with the OS, with an alteration effect in the wallpaper settings menu
0
No votes
Something else pre made, with an alteration effect in the wallpaper settings menu
0
No votes
Varies, not predominantly from one category
2
3%
Not a still image (rendered video)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 58

mathias
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What kind of wallpaper are you using?

Post by mathias » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:55 am

nt
Last edited by mathias on Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:12 am, edited 4 times in total.

Aris
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Post by Aris » Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:57 am

im using a photo wallpaper of the upcomming game "Final Fantasy XII" for PS2. the artsy one of the giant ship

mathias
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Post by mathias » Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:05 am

I'm using some enigma screenshots I've stiched together(4 screens). It's too bad there's so few levels in that game that are at least 2x2 screens.

coldmist
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Post by coldmist » Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:34 am

I have a rotator that changes it every day. Most of my backgrounds are from Digital Blasphemy or deviantart.com, usually of a 'space' nature (ie planets like Saturn with a starburst or something like that)

mathias
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Post by mathias » Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:43 am

Here's the 3 enigma wallpapers I've made so far:

Image Image Image

Another technique I like to use, for small images, is to paste a horizontally mirrored copy of the image beside it and then a vertically mirrored copy of that below it, so that it doesn't look horrible when tiled.

IsaacKuo
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Post by IsaacKuo » Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:18 am

My desktop wallpapers are most anime related. The majority were made by others; some I made myself largely from artbook scans; a handful I made myself with my own artwork.

On my main workstation, the wallpaper randomly rotates every 7 minutes. On my other PCs with less computing power, the wallpaper randomly rotates about every hour.

I have a huge collection of wallpaper backgrounds, organized into many different categories. Depending on mood, I'll alter what categories are in the rotation.

I have an XMas category which gets used around XMas-time. I've also started a relatively small Halloween category, but it's not as big (mostly fan art based, since Halloween is barely known of in Japan).

Oh--naturally my humongous collection of wallpapers are ALL in the standard 4:3 aspect ratio. This includes many 1280x1024 abominations which have been manually chopped down to kosher 1280x960 dimensions. (Yes, I'm still looking for the cretin responsible for 1280x1024 so I can give him his well deserved kick in the crotch.)

slipknottin
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Post by slipknottin » Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:44 am

Image

mathias
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Post by mathias » Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:58 am

slipknottin wrote:Image
I've been using some blue marble pics too, the cloud ones(altered).

tragus
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Post by tragus » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:16 am

I usually change my background every few days to something from NASA (e.g., http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html) that will look reasonable on portrait mode. However, coincidentally to slipknottin and mathias, today I flipped my screen and used the Blue Marble shot of winter 2004.

scaryduck
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Post by scaryduck » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:20 am


Rusty075
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Post by Rusty075 » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:40 am

Not sure which category my wallpaper falls into.






(we had a similar thread to this about a year ago, and yes, I'm still using the same wallpaper)

lenny
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Post by lenny » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:42 am

Has anyone done benchmarking on how or if desktop wallpaper affects Windows GUI performance?

I'm running with no wallpaper, black background. I find it easier on the eye esp. late at night with the lights off.

lenny
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Post by lenny » Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:44 am

Rusty075 wrote:Not sure which category my wallpaper falls into.
Erm, sickeningly cute? :-) I'd have to prevent my daughter from seeing it, or she'd insist on using it :-)

BTW, what's Sensor 3 measuring? HDD?

mathias
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Post by mathias » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:04 pm

Rusty075 wrote:Not sure which category my wallpaper falls into.
Not 1, or 9. Hopefully not 2, 4, 5, 7 or 10. So 3, 6 or 8.

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Post by Rusty075 » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:20 pm

lenny wrote:Has anyone done benchmarking on how or if desktop wallpaper affects Windows GUI performance?

...

Erm, sickeningly cute? I'd have to prevent my daughter from seeing it, or she'd insist on using it

BTW, what's Sensor 3 measuring? HDD?
I saw a test once where running an all-black background boosted performance a percent or two....but this was on hardware that is ancient by modern standards. With a 2Ghz CPU I can't imagine it makes a measurable difference. Might make your monitor use less power though, so that can't hurt anything.


(that's not really my wallpaper btw, just in case anyone failed to get my humor. Well, it was, but only long enough to snap a screenshot)

Yes, Sensor 3 was HDD. That was when my system was in a Centurion V case, sitting on the floor, during a Michigan winter.

Tephras
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Post by Tephras » Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:29 pm

lenny wrote:I'm running with no wallpaper, black background. I find it easier on the eye esp. late at night with the lights off.
Same here. And for the exact same reason.

teejay
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Post by teejay » Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:39 pm

My desktop varies wildly... right now I am looking at the BMW Concept Z4 Coupé from various angles at a resolution of 5696x1536 (3 displays side by side) but I use the UltraMon gradient colored backgrounds a lot when I want visual peace & quiet.

Many images I use come from Caedes.net or from Serious Wheels... SW has very nice (car) images up to 1920x1440 which can be hard to come by.

Ryan
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Post by Ryan » Fri Oct 14, 2005 3:01 pm

Image

That's what I'm using.

StarfishChris
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Post by StarfishChris » Fri Oct 14, 2005 3:23 pm

A photo of an otter I took a few years ago. Nothing really interesting ;)
Last edited by StarfishChris on Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lenny
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Post by lenny » Fri Oct 14, 2005 3:28 pm

Rusty075 wrote:(that's not really my wallpaper btw, just in case anyone failed to get my humor. Well, it was, but only long enough to snap a screenshot)
Yes, we know it clashes with your cigar smoking hobby :-)

By the way, for those with really nothing better to do, try a desktop like one of these.

Rusty075
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Post by Rusty075 » Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:12 pm

lenny wrote:By the way, for those with really nothing better to do, try a desktop like one of these.
Way ahead of you: Russ' "transparent" 2005FPW

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri Oct 14, 2005 6:07 pm

Greetings,

Image

This is a photo I took in New Zealand, in a place on the west coast of the north island called Wanganui -- nice, huh? I used Kodacolor 64, and I scanned a positive print -- there is far too much dust on the image. One day, I'll dig out the slide and scan it directly...

wim
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Post by wim » Fri Oct 14, 2005 6:38 pm

my wallpaper is a photo of aria giovanni. don't think i'll post it incase the mods decide it's inappropriate :) (how come nobody here had babe wallpapers..are we all prudes?)

to the two guys that use wallpaper rotators/randomisers, what utility is that? i was looking for one a while ago but couldn't find any that worked to my satisfaction. i only had a few simple requirements,
  • i. that the shuffle works ok. better than winamp's, at least
    ii. that the resize filter is decent (since i use 1600x1200 and most 4:3 walls out there need stretch to fill screen)
    iii. freeware (or "other", ahem) which doesn't add logos or nags to the image :evil:
i must have tried about 10 different progs and they all failed in one respect! i was amazed how many would add ugly artifacts such as colour banding when resizing (how hard could it be to add a lancoz resize or something :roll: ). when i found a free one with an ok resize filter, demaWallpaperChanger, it would crash for no good reason. author said he was working on a fix, but this was years ago now..grr


btw here was my copy of Russ' transparent screen :D

chylld
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Post by chylld » Sat Oct 15, 2005 12:00 am

i use an anime-related one:

Image

it belongs to an anime called Haibane Renmei, it's by far the best anime i've ever seen surpassing bleach, hime, etc. recommend you watch it :P

wainwra
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Post by wainwra » Sat Oct 15, 2005 12:43 am

I use Webshots

Slaugh
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Post by Slaugh » Sat Oct 15, 2005 1:24 am

I found mine on DeviantART a few months ago... It's pretty nice on my VP191b LCD! :)

Image

(Click on the picture to see the 1280x1024 version)

StarfishChris
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Post by StarfishChris » Sat Oct 15, 2005 3:39 am

wim wrote:my wallpaper is a photo of aria giovanni. don't think i'll post it incase the mods decide it's inappropriate :) (how come nobody here had babe wallpapers..are we all prudes?)
Er... too distracting. Yeah, that's it.

Bluefront
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Post by Bluefront » Sat Oct 15, 2005 5:03 am

I've got a big investment in cameras and photo equiptment....seems silly not to use some of the results.

Image

This is actually the second monitor....keeps the MBM dashboard visible and a few other things. You don't get to see the main monitor screen... :lol:

Ralf Hutter
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Post by Ralf Hutter » Sat Oct 15, 2005 5:48 am

I've been going through an artsy-fartsy phase lately, and have been using this pre-made Impressionistic style of wallpaper. Typically I almost always use my own photographs though.

IsaacKuo
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Post by IsaacKuo » Sat Oct 15, 2005 9:22 am

wim wrote:to the two guys that use wallpaper rotators/randomisers, what utility is that?
I use the KDE desktop environment in Linux. The shuffle works ok, I think. The resize filter looks bilinear to me, which is really nice, and it's all no-nonsense freeware.

Back when I was still using windows, the poor resizing capabilities prompted me to organize wallpaper images by resolution and I used to manually resize to different resolutions in Paintshop Pro.

Since I use only Linux now, I only bother to make sure the images are 4:3 ratio. I don't even restrict myself to the "standard" sizes anymore. For example, when cropping a scanned image I may end up with something sized 444x333.

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