Windows Vista Ultimate wallpapers remixed

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.

Windows Vista trends wallpaper

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.

Windows Vista β€œStart” orb wallpaper

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.

38 insightful thoughts

  1. 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!

  2. 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. πŸ™‚

  3. in my LCD, edited regions are obvious. They looked grainy and to the strands, they glow but the auroras show layered patches of black.

  4. @Marcpodi: Your monitor gamma might be very different to the standard Windows setting then. The grain is visible because it reduces gradient banding.

  5. 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…

  6. @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. πŸ˜‰

  7. 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..

  8. 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

  9. the BEST, thank you, you did an amazing job cleaning this up, undetectable!

  10. well really nice wall paper specially ir is very pleasent to eyes thnx for this nice wallpaper…

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