Classic windows xp wallpaper

Windows XP Desktop Backgrounds

Microsoft Windows XP defined an era in personal computing. It remains iconic in the PC timeline. I think its desktop wallpapers are iconic by themselves. How many millions of people looked at one of these images every day?

I compiled a list of the default Windows XP desktop background wallpapers. XP was everywhere when I was getting my start on the web. Windows XP & its lovable desktop backgrounds helped shape the designer I am today, much the way the house in which I grew up shaped my personality.

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1. Ascent

I don’t know what mountain this is, though it’s probably a famous one. The photography is nice & the scale of the moon is impressive, but I just don’t love this one.

As a background image, the photo is effective. It has muted colors & low-contrast and viewing desktop icons atop this image is perfectly easy.

2. Autumn

I love this photo. I grew up in New England, so scenes like this always make me smile. This view might as well have been down the road from my parents’ house.

As a desktop background, however, this image is a pain. The color contrast is so high that desktop icons are lost easily. The image’s saving grace is the dark tree trunk at left which housed most people’s left-side-oriented icons.

3. Azul

This is a very happy photo. I can’t help but visualize myself swimming in the perfect blue water (do islands like that really exist?)

As a wallpaper, this image does fairly well. The all-blue scenery makes for a mostly-consistent work area where icons & windows appear well.

4. Bliss

This scene might be the most iconic of all XP wallpapers. If memory serves, this image was the default wallpaper. And it’s aptly named; “bliss” sounds just about right. (However, have you ever seen a sky that blue? Easy on the retouching, Redmond).

I’m probably biased, but I think this might be the perfect desktop background. It has enough color & contrast to be beautiful, but enough consistency to make browsing a pleasure.

5. Crystal

This wallpaper must have been the activated background on every high school & college PC lab machine I ever saw. And I like it.

As a desktop, it’s perfect. Shades of blue that stay out of your way but don’t bore you.

6. Follow

Enter: college freshman girls. I think every single girl in my dorm had this as their background. But isn’t that the same small fish, pasted in 6 times?

It’s a good wallpaper. Mostly-blue backgrounds are becoming a theme. But its splashes of orange are a little much contrast for me.

7. Friend

My wife loves this one. And who could blame her? An adorable dog & rustic scene, shot in pantone. It’s a winning combination.

As a desktop background, it’s perfect. It has color, but still a black & white feel, making the colored icons a perfect contrast.

8. Home

Boring. Blah. That’s all I have to say. I hate this one.

9. Moon flower

Anyone who could keep this as their desktop wallpaper for more than a few minutes is blind or crazy. It almost hurts to look at.

Were it not for the overpowering color & contrast in the whole image, this background would be ok. But it’s just too much.

10. Peace

This is the best wallpaper Windows has ever had. It’s simple, elegant, and classic. I have always found this image very inspiring. I even tweeted about it back in 2011 (around the time I wrote this article).

In college, when I was still a PC user, I found this WinXP wallpaper beautiful & inspiring. Guess I still do. http://t.co/z7JeyrM

You can’t mess with perfection. All the detail of this image is away from the left-side icon stack that most users had. It’s perfectly quiet & beautiful.

11. Power

Ouch. Please keep scrolling.

12. Purple flower

I don’t remember seeing this one, but there it was in my old XP machine’s display preferences. I guess it’s ok. No major complaints from me.

13. Radiance

I like this one too. I don’t think I ever used it as my background, but it’s a nice photo. I’m a fan of darker desktops, so this one is right up my alley.

Like Autumn above, this one places its dark shadow strip strategically in the left-side icon stack area. The light moon areas a bit high-contrast, but overall this one works for me.

14. Red moon desert

I can’t help but see this wallpaper as an opposite to Bliss. The red tint of the sand is a bit much for me, but it’s a really nice photo.

I’m sensing a theme of keeping the images’ left sides darker, to provide better contrast for icons. This one does a decent job at that.

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Безмятежность или заставка Windows XP: история

Классические обои «Безмятежность», ставившиеся по умолчанию на рабочий стол в операционной системе Microsoft XP – это фотография, которую видело самое большое количество людей на планете: более миллиарда. Автор снимка получил от Microsoft более 100000 долларов, в то время как автор другого популярного «обойного» снимка «Осень» заработал на нём всего лишь $45.

Американский фотограф Чарльз О’Риер (Charles O’Rear) сделал снимок, получивший название «Безмятежность» (Bliss), среднеформатной камерой, когда ехал по шоссе в Калифорнии в январе 1996 года. О’Риер отправил снимок в агентство стоковой фотографии Westlight, которое через пару лет было приобретено компанией Corbis Билла Гейтса.

Известны точные координаты места, запечатлённого на знаменитом снимке: 38.250124,-122.410817. Его не раз снимали другие фотографы:

А вот так выглядит местность на сегодняшних картах Гугл:

Компания Microsoft выбрала снимок О’Риера среди тысяч других, имевшихся на тот момент в стоковой библиотеке, посчитав, что он наилучшим образом иллюстрирует философию Windows XP. Точный гонорар, который получил фотограф, не называется, однако известно, что он превышает $100000.

Любопытно, что автор другой фотографии, использованной в популярных обоях XP, под названием «Осень», получил несравненно меньшую сумму. Питер Бьюриан (Peter Burian) отправил своё фото в тот же сток Corbis в статусе «бесплатного изображения», так что Microsoft приобрёл права на его широкое использование за сумму, слегка превышающую $45.

Питер Бьюриан сделал этот снимок в октябре 1999 года среди сотен других, тестируя объектив для фотографического журнала. «Я был потрясён, когда осознал, что моё фото увидят сотни миллионов человек. Ни о чём подобном я не думал, когда делал снимок», рассказывал Бьюриан.

Вот такая разная судьба, разная история двух снимков. Один принёс своему автору изрядную сумму денег, широкую известность и (впоследствии) контракты с мировыми брендами уровня Lufthansa. Другой же смог разок сходить в ресторан.

Статья подготовлена телеграм каналом Диапозитив

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Windows XP

Windows XP, codenamed Whistler, is an operating system released by Microsoft in 2001. It is the successor to Windows 2000 and Me, being the first version of Windows NT intended for both businesses and home users. It has a memorable set of wallpapers, sample pictures and user account pictures, including the iconic Bliss, one of the most viewed photos on Earth due to it being the default wallpaper and XP’s popularity. Also notable are Red moon desert, taken by Bliss’ Charles O’Rear, Autumn, which was the subject of a 2007 Vanity Fair article and the branding wallpaper. It would be followed by Windows Vista in 2006, after years of its messy development.

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Wallpapers [ edit | edit source ]

According to program manager Gregory Raiz, the wallpapers were selected «to evoke natural themes of hills, trees & sand» [1] , as Microsoft aimed for XP to look more human than previous versions. The wallpapers were primarily licensed from Corbis and used a mix of royalty free and rights managed licenses, while Bliss was fully acquired from Corbis and Charles O’Rear so that no company would ever use it again. With the exception of Vortec space, the non-photographic wallpapers were created by various contractors that worked internally at Microsoft, according to Raiz through email correspondence.

Like with earlier versions, the wallpapers are at a rather low resolution of 800×600, which would quickly become outdated not long after the release of Windows XP, due to screen resolutions progressively increasing. Downloadable wallpapers would later be provided in higher resolutions, while Windows Vista onwards features wallpapers at 1920×1440 and 1920×1200.

Media Center Edition-exclusive [ edit | edit source ]

As Media Center Edition came with many features of Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP, its wallpapers were also included, albeit with new names that reference what is depicted in the wallpaper. Most of these wallpapers appear to have been taken from Getty Images, although some were presumably taken down many years ago, leaving their origins unclear.

Starter Edition [ edit | edit source ]

Each localized version of Starter Edition has around three to six wallpapers. Most of them come from Corbis and Getty Images and use a rights managed license, with a few being royalty free. Similar to the Home and Professional editions of Windows XP, these wallpapers have a resolution of 800×600 (with the exception of one being 801×600, likely by accident). Unlike these two editions, however, Windows XP Starter Edition includes wallpapers in the Bitmap (.bmp) file format instead of the JPEG (.jpg) file format. The practice of having regional wallpapers would be used again by Microsoft for Windows 7, where 20 countries received two themes (built-in and downloadable) consisting of six wallpapers each.

The default wallpaper is SE_neutral_wallpaper, which is completely unrelated to the one used in most other editions. Also, due to the rarity of XP Starter Edition in several countries, not all wallpapers are known so they cannot be listed. Starter Edition also came out in Egypt, sub-Saharan African countries and possibly others, although this is unconfirmed as no ISOs or even photos are known to exist.

Embedded Standard and POSReady 2009 [ edit | edit source ]

In 2008, Microsoft released newer embedded versions of XP. POSReady 2009 features three wallpapers: one with no logo, one with a small logo and one with a large logo.
[table will be done soon]

Sample Pictures [ edit | edit source ]

All four were royalty free Corbis images, three of which were available from royalty free CDs, with the other one seemingly being online only. Similar to the wallpapers, all of these images have a resolution of 800×600.

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