Last Thursday, the Windows Ultimate team released two Windows Vista Ultimate branded wallpapers featuring strands and a backlit Vista orb to the public for download. They were very cool wallpapers to begin with, but had severe gradient blocking and the Ultimate branding which might not appeal to some people. So I took the liberty of editing the wallpapers to give it a little visual makeover.
For the Vista strands wallpaper, I removed the Ultimate branding, fixed up a LOT of the gradient blocking and that huge ugly patch of black in the middle of the picture. I also made the background darker, and brightened the strands for it to out more. Download 16×10 version / 4×3 version.
For the backlight “Start” orb wallpaper, I removed the Ultimate branding, tried to fix up some of the gradient blocking and added a slight ‘aurora’ color filter to make it a little more vibrant. Download 16×10 version / 4×3 version.
They’re only available at one resolution, the highest, at 2560×1600 (30″). I would assume most people don’t have a larger monitor, so you can downscale them pretty easily. Thanks to Andre for creating some 4×3 aspect ratio versions. Enjoy.
MetroTwit
Sweet, setting the first one as my background now.
Wow Long they are awesome! I was going to download the official version and simply black out the ‘Ultimate’ text (since Premium is my flavour) but you did one better and cleaned it up. kudos!
Great! Wanted to do this myself but haven’t got the time to do it. Thanks!
Excellent … I’d already removed the word “Ultimate” from the strands wallpaper but hadn’t got round to sorting out the dodgy blocky background. Thanks.
in my LCD, edited regions are obvious. They looked grainy and to the strands, they glow but the auroras show layered patches of black.
@Marcpodi: Your monitor gamma might be very different to the standard Windows setting then. The grain is visible because it reduces gradient banding.
Erm…sorry to sound like a selfish idiot…but could there be a 5:4 (1280×1024) version? I have an old monitor…
Incidentally, why is that widescreen ratio called 16×10 by just about every source I’ve seen? It should be 8×5, considering the usual practice of reducing each side as far as possible…
Wallpaper update with Long Zheng’s version! Thank you, Sir
@Andrew F: I think you can use the 4×3 version can’t you? It will just crop off a little from the left and right (or top and bottom, I can’t remember).
The widescreen ratio is called 16×10 because it is easier to compare with 16×9. 8×5 vs 16:9 doesn’t sound like a very fair comparison.
Good job, thanks nice.
cool thang!! thanx mr. long for these wallpapers. now my desktop looks more kinda my personality..lol . anyways they r really nice and hope to see more cool stuff .. thanx again..
Great wallpaper! Remix some more:)
The wallpapers are so cool… i have in on my pc, it’s got an LCD monitor so it looks grea!!! thanks mate!!
owie, UK
Very nice backgrounds. I modified it slightly for my Dual screen. Looks awesome! Thanks
i downloaded both of them, they rock!
These wallpapers freakin rock!! Good job!!
thank you from Saudi Arabia
Thank from Poland.Good job.
Thank you from India
Good Work
thanks … Great work …. thank u from UAE
thanks from India.
these wallpapers are pretty cool!!!
great work!!
thanks…from Philippines
thanks…from england
the BEST, thank you, you did an amazing job cleaning this up, undetectable!
good site for wallpapers
a quanto pare sono l’unica italiana qui si vede che non conoscono ancora questo programma:)
Thats great I did the exact same thing before I saw this, lol
fiiiiiiiiiiiii
thats great I liked it they are ultimate
nice, both are professional looking wallpaper , i thought they were given in windows vista ultimate!
well really nice wall paper specially ir is very pleasent to eyes thnx for this nice wallpaper…
hip&cool great work!break it down !peace !yo!
awesome there are awesome
hip&cool great work!break it down !peace !yo!
nice, both are professional looking wallpaper , i thought they were given in windows vista ultimate!