Lillymon's wallpaper topic

Lillymon

Lillymon

New member
Coming from a suggestion from Reaper man, this is a topic about how I've started messing with wallpapers in The GIMP to give me material for a fast growing wallpaper cycle on desktop 4 (random, changes after one hour) that I've started building. I'm currently at 20 and counting.

This really started when I saw Serial Experiments Lain recently (it's really good, grab the DVD boxset now while it's still reasonably priced). Lain herself was on desktop 4 for some time prior to this, but seeing the series caused this explosion. One of the many wallpapers that was good but not quite right was this one:



What's wrong with this? Well it's the wrong resolution (1600x1200, and I need 1680x1050) but also the scaling is rubbish! Take a look at Lain's jawline for a good example, the jaggies there just aren't right. Also, all of the fine details are obliterated.

So, I went to Demonoid, found an artbook torrent with a really high-res version of the original artwork, and got editing. The end result was this:



Correct resolution, no more jagged edges, fine details intact. I could probably have done with finding a larger logo (that current one looks fine now, but will get dwarfed if I increase the resolution again) but it looks good enough for now.

I've also made a gallery for wallpapers that I've modified in some way, ranging from removing obnoxious names or URLs (seriously, they just ruin the look) to sharpening the whole thing in an effort to remove blurring. All of that gallery is currently in my desktop 4 cycle.

Requests are welcome. Some of the wallpapers may not scale up further, but just under half I can see in the gallery will. I'm also willing to have a go at fixing others.
 
fixed...though I would have looked into a GIF palette or some light JPEG compression for a less resource-intensive background setting...but as far as preservance that was best

"WarningYou must log in first in order to view your gallery."

oh and I use solid black for my desktop background just a few icons, not so much installed, barely look at it
 
Iconoclast said:
fixed...though I would have looked into a GIF palette or some light JPEG compression for a less resource-intensive background setting...but as far as preservance that was best
Click to expand...
That's why I use PNGs, to avoid generational loss. Resource intensiveness seems pretty irrelevant to me, as I don't notice any difference whatever I'm using.

Iconoclast said:
"WarningYou must log in first in order to view your gallery."
Click to expand...
I was using the wrong URL, here's the correct one.

Iconoclast said:
oh and I use solid black for my desktop background just a few icons, not so much installed, barely look at it
Click to expand...
I don't look at my backgrounds too much, but I like them to be nice when I do. There's also the ubiquitous desktop threads, which give me an opportunity to show off.
 
Most of the wallpapers I used to apply were of rainbow aspect or a dark morbid mixture of vivid colors. Actually some of them were even generic icons I created and tiled (using basic pixel work).

I use PNGs as well (for a list of good reasons besides that), but even I wouldn't use a lossless image of that resolution since stretching is CPU-intensive. (In fact that's why the folder background mapping shell for selected wallpapers was removed in WinXP.) If you have the eyesight for the compression though by all means this is just me; my eyesight is no longer sharp as it once was.
 
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