20 ms·

Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

773 points by onhacker 2y ago

ninetyninenine 2y ago
Why do this when you can get an identical picture from photoshop?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Why do this when you can get an identical picture from photoshop? It gives it character and helps ensure you'll get good artists to work on it. Though now I wish they'd made that clear by making the intermediate shots desktop defaults.
- rizky05 2y ago
  [dead]
- fsloth 2y ago
  If you can get kick-ass smoke and particles like that in Photoshop out-of-the-box please do tell me how.
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    Typically you use photos. Photoshop does not come out of the box with photos.
all2 2y ago
This is one of my favorite examples of practical effects. I hate windows as an OS, but I still admire this every time I log in at work.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Why wouldn't you set a better background image?
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    I think this is actually an interesting question. I think I've been leaving on the default desktop on any computer I use, for over a decade now. It's not just that, it's every kind of setting. I just don't futz around with things that don't actively get in the way of my work anymore. I used to love to tweak everything, to try to pour my personality into a sweet computer setup, but after using computers for fifteen years or so, I just lost interest in that.
    - all2 2y ago
      I've settled on a slightly custom setup based on Plasma and i3wm. It involves a single systemd unit running in user space. I get batteries included desktop environment and a tiling window manager I can tolerate. I also set up zsh+powerlevel10k. In all it takes me about 20 minutes to configure.
walteweiss 2y ago
[flagged]
- 0xcoffee 2y ago
  In Section 03 there is a video showing the physical setup.
  - walteweiss 2y ago
    Thank you, I tend to ignore videos when on mobile. Checked it from my laptop. Feels useless to me, to setup the whole physical thing for the sake of photo that could be just rendered. But to each their own.
- throawayonthe 2y ago
  [dead]
- Takennickname 2y ago
  You weren't attentive.
disillusioned 2y ago
Despite having seen this image thousands of times, I never considered it might have originated from practical effects, even if it was composited. Very cool. The composite sounds like no picnic, either: >With over 3,000 photos captured from the shoot, the initial stage of the composite was an exercise in patience as Munko diligently went through all of the assets and picked the best ones suited for the final image. He then dusted off his old 40 year-old designer fingers and brought them into Photoshop where he tirelessly combined exposures at a blistering 9k resolution. He first build up the base image, which was obviously the foundation for the hero still, flushing out the core logo design with a variety of laser-infused illuminations.. These core layers were varied, ranging from minimal rim-lighting to a multitude of laser lines fanning through the central portions of the logo, lighting up the volumetric haze in a variety of artful ways. Compositing all these layers together was an extremely iterative process and was done in collaboration with Daddy Bear Art Director Ryan Vulk and Creative Director Christopher Ashworth, the two senior Directors on the Windows Brand Team. Once the lovelies at the Windows team and up the ladder at Microsoft were happy with the aesthetics of the logo foundation, Munko then composited in the environmental passes, which consisted of separately shot layers of smoke and haze to create a very moody palette and accentuated the qualities of the practical approach. The final touches were the lens flares, which were again shot as separate passes but were flaring the lens with a light source positioned in the same place as the laser projector, so the flares lined up perfectly with all the other passes. The final grade was applied to bring everything into the signature ‘Microsoft Blue’ palette, but still leaving a tonal range that kept everyone happy. The final 9k file was then sent to the magicians at XYZ Creative Production Agency, who specialize in high-end photo retouching and did the final optimizations on the hero image.
- ghusbands 2y ago
  This comment is just a copy/paste of a quarter of the article.
  - eganist 2y ago
    It looks like it was just a mis-quote. All the paragraphs below the quoted one are included as part of the quote but don't begin with the leading >
puttycat 2y ago
The technical ingenuity is impressive. I personally find this visual quite cold and soulless, compared to previous Windows wallpapers, mostly XP's of course. For me this also coincided with Windows becoming completely useless and my moving to a Mac.
- vsnf 2y ago
  There was definitely a kind of warm, optimistic vibe that came with the Windows XP wallpaper. The whole UI language of the OS was similar too, with bubbly blues and greens everywhere. I suppose it captured a kind of positive cultural attitude towards computing.
  - tavavex 2y ago
    I think it was aimed at making the OS look less threatening and complicated to a new user. Then again, people did complain about it being a "Fisher-Price UI", so maybe this overwhelmingly positive perception is a result of people spending so much time with the OS and getting used to the way things were.
    - vsnf 2y ago
      I do recall the Fisher-Price complaints. As I recall it mostly came from the Linux (or Linux-inclined) crowd. I never really understood the complaints, though it was common enough that I must have just been missing something. But really, I don't get whats wrong with a functional UI that's also friendly and inviting.
      - amatecha 2y ago
        Just today I was thinking about XP and the phrase "Fisher-Price" came to mind. I liked XP's UI, even as whimsical and toy-like (and easy to make fun of) as it was. I'd prefer if computers and OSes retained the whimsy and character of that late-90's-early-2000's era of Win XP and the colourful iMacs, etc.
  - userbinator 2y ago
behnamoh 2y ago
I remember the good old days when I would spend so much time choosing the right wallpapers for my PC and phone. Nowadays, the wallpaper is completely hidden from me because I am constantly switching between apps on macOS thanks to my Raycast custom keyboard shortcuts and I never see whatever picture I set... It's a weird feeling. Kinda like letting go of the desktop-oriented computer in favor of window-manager-oriented. There's beauty in the former, and simplicity and elegance in the latter.
- esafak 2y ago
  I use the Unsplash MacOS app to rotate it. https://unsplash.com/apps https://unsplash.com/apps
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  I used (like many many many) to do this. And one day I thought to myself.. hey.. that greenish background color of Win NT was cool (R0, G128, B128), wasn't it? And then the Windows 2000 blue.. oh how beautiful.. (R60, G110, B166). And later in life i switched to total black with dark mode for all my devices (and my eyes thanked me for it :)
hulitu 2y ago
> Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed And then photoshopped. /s You always need 2 programs in Windows to do a thing right. /s
msoad 2y ago
I don’t want to be a fanboy but the wallpaper is so soulless and industrial. I like how Apple always tries to bring nature to computing with wallpapers and screensavers. For example https://iso.500px.com/iphone-6-milky-way-wallpaper-interview/ https://iso.500px.com/iphone-6-milky-way-wallpaper-interview... Also the Ariel videos of nature and cities for Apple TV and Mac is another example. Windows feels so corporate and boring tbh
- ggm 2y ago
  "The apple wallpaper was physically built (by nature) and photographed."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gizajob 2y ago
  Yeah I do kind of love the current dynamic "different every time" Mac OS wallpaper / splash screen. It's corporate Apple but still great, and infinitely better than MS's Borg-like contentless flatness.
  - oefrha 2y ago
    The Windows login screen has been showing dynamic landscape photos for a loooong time. Of course, the part where you accidentally click on one of the search labels (?) and it opens Bing in Edge (previously IE), which is one of the three hundred ways you can accidentally open Edge/Bing in Windows, is not cool at all.
  - npteljes 2y ago
    Windows can have Bing Wallpaper, which changes the wallpaper every day. It's not installed by default, but it's a fun offering from Microsoft.
- amatecha 2y ago
  Nice, so many good photos in that post! Thanks for sharing :D
- 2y ago
Kwpolska 2y ago
The original Windows 10 wallpaper. In a later release, it was replaced by a brighter and cleaner version that was drawn on a computer. I personally prefer the later revision.
- noname120 2y ago
  > replaced by a brighter and cleaner version that was drawn on a computer Can you source this statement?
  - leoedin 2y ago
    I went looking - and there's a wiki dedicated to just this topic. https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Windows_10 https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Windows_10 It does seem that the original was replaced in May 2019 by a brighter version, although whether it was drawn on a computer or not is anyone's guess.
    - jerbear4328 2y ago
      According to the wiki, it was not drawn on a computer, but created again in the same way as the first. I personally prefer the darker original, but most Windows users use light mode. It's cool that it has 25 people listed in the credits for what seems like a such a simple image. > GMUNK was also involved in this version, and stated that it was created under the same methodology as the previous version. https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Hero#Later_version https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Hero#Later_versio...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
asdiojadiosdijo 2y ago
[flagged]
meisenhus 2y ago
As impressive as this looks (and is), the effort strikes me as monumentally oversized. This particular picture, with its straight lines and everything artificial, could have just as well come out of a renderer. For substantially less cost, the result would have been the same. Doesn't mean you don't need to have the creative vision first. But executing it with a camera and a light/laser/fog set and all the effort that went into it, seriously, just take a talented vfx artist and you get the same result. It's different with nature photography and especially with humans. But there was nothing natural with this image.
- guitarlimeo 2y ago
  But that's exactly what's interesting with this! Everything can't just be viewed through the lens of costs, the effort to make something unnatural like this in real life is part of the art itself. If you're just looking at the end result, yeah, same result could've been achieved with VFX with a lot less costs, but it also wouldn't have as much value.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dag11 2y ago
  That's like saying why should anyone at all make music, art, hire actors, etc., when A.I. will be able to do all of these tasks identically over the next couple years (partially already). The human element is important. Because we're humans.
  - rizky05 2y ago
    [dead]
  - aniviacat 2y ago
    Once AI is capable of delivering similar quality, many musicians and actors will indeed be replaced. But until this technology exists, musicians and actors will continue being employed.
- deleted 2y ago
asimovfan 2y ago
Although this is great somehow in my opinion this was the best windoze wallpaper It somehow captures my soul, perhaps because i was very young when i saw it https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fm0zhfbiq61v21.png%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3371c9c68bca464e4939fed3cb4a8b3c32ef5cf6 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
- sdeyerle 2y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, wasn't this actually the installer background screen that got repurposed as an option for a wallpaper?
  - MrJagil 2y ago
    The linked post is titled "Background image from the windows 95 setup window" https://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/comments/bicyok/background_image_from_the_windows_95_setup_window/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/comments/bicyok/backgrou...
- magic_hamster 2y ago
  As already mentioned it was the install setup, and it's my favorite Windows background to date as well. It's actually a 2 bit image with all blue and black, with dithering. It's very comforting in my opinion.
- paulmooreparks 2y ago
  That Microsoft Natural Elite on the left side of the image is still the only keyboard I use, or will use. I have a stack of four backups in the closet.
- edvards 2y ago
  Is there a name for this visual style?
  - reddalo 2y ago
    I also wonder this. It's a recurring style from '90s software.
huygens6363 2y ago
I hate myself for saying it, but this feels like an artistic variation on "we spent 500 hours manually perfecting React button animations" or "I built a Lisp so we can have more interesting configuration files for our ... todo list app". I guess I'm jaded. > Creative Director: GMUNK > Managing Director, Live Action: Oliver Fuselier > Managing Partner, Digital: Dustin Callif > Executive Producer: Robert Helphand > Head of Production: Amy DeLossa > Producer: Mary Church > Associate Producer: John Stern > Production Supervisor: Liz Welonek > etc ... I mean, come on.
- cl3misch 2y ago
  You're not wrong, but the production team might be more justified when you account for the huge number of users seeing this image. Would a synthetic image sufficed? Yes. Can it be worth it to invest in artists creating something nice if millions of people see it? Yes.
  - huygens6363 2y ago
    Bah. You're right. I'm being obtuse and need more coffee. Nerding out on things is fun, my whole life is based on it. I guess I feel some rivalry with the artistic world. Maybe it's jealousy.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    It's kind of sad how often the best way for artists to get paid and have their work seen is by creating corporate advertising. At least in this case it's just a pretty logo and not a direct lie or manipulation.
- microtonal 2y ago
  I don't know. I think a nice wallpaper can cheer up the day and make a system more lovely. Seems relevant when it reaches so many people. However, I have never really liked this wallpaper (the few times I have seen it as a non-Windows user). The random desertscapes and dynamic wallpapers in macOS are really much more appealing.
- omnimus 2y ago
rossant 2y ago
(2015)
- dang 2y ago
  Added above. Thanks!
foreverobama 2y ago
[dead]
kookamamie 2y ago
To me as a photographer and as computer vision expert, this sounds wayyyyyy over-engineered and -produced. I get that there's a big vision (and budget) involved, but c'mon!
- UberFly 2y ago
  Yea, I appreciate their dedication but the end-product doesn't equal the effort when Jane in XBox 3d effects department probably could have done this during her lunch break.
  - omnimus 2y ago
    For one still sure but they have made lots of movies from that set that were used for promotion. At some point this is a lot easier to get so much much material and quick variations.
- rjzzleep 2y ago
  If only they had the same dedication to keep ads out of the core OS.
- cranium 2y ago
  You have to take into consideration that the default wallpaper is arguably the most seen picture in the entire world.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Yup... but, if everyone thinks it's a rendering, and you could have saved tons of money by actually rendering it instead of doing what these guys did, it's still a waste of money if you ask me...
    - manuelmoreale 2y ago
      That can be said for many other artistic creations. But if you ask me, the fact that it was so elaborate adds something to it. The end result might be the same but the intentions and the process to get there matter. Also, waste of money. We’re talking Microsoft. It’s not like those money we’re going to be spent on charity. They paid some creative people to do creative work. We should appreciate that.
jmprspret 2y ago
Gmunk is awesome
diego_sandoval 2y ago
Whenever I have to use Windows, I feel dirty, like Microsoft's filth is slowly contaminating my spirit through my interaction with the computer. So, the last thing that I would want to set as a wallpaper would be a reminder of that fact that I'm using Windows.
- Zecc 2y ago
  I don't know about you, but more often than not I have maximized windows covering the background image. The thing which reminds me I'm using Windows is the start button. Not to mention.. everything else.
sschueller 2y ago
Very cool but I would prefer spending all that time and money on building a better product and what they delivered. This is like a startup spending hours upon hours on logo and name instead of actually building something.
- column 2y ago
  This is such an ignorant take. The default wallpaper is seen by millions if not billions of people. Many never change it. It's an important part of the branding. The total cost of the shoot, including equipment, salaries, the studio, etc. is NOTHING to Microsoft and its marketing budget. It's not like they had to prioritize this over anything else, they are printing money left and right, they are a trillion dollar company and the default wallpaper is a key aspect of how people see their core product, Windows. It would be disastrous of them to ship with a sub-par wallpaper and in what world would the money "saved" would make a difference to "build a better product"?
  - sschueller 2y ago
    Have you used the Office365 Suite lately?
    - Scharkenberg 2y ago
      Yes, it's still the best office suite in the market.
  - UweSchmidt 2y ago
    Does Microsoft have plenty of money to do anything? Sure. Does the trillion dollar company spend an appropriate effort on the product itself? Certainly not! The issue is this: From Windows 10 and up, almost every interaction with the UI is a little bit broken, and I could fill pages just describing things that used to work just right in Windows 7 and earlier. It appears the Windows UI is now designed and approved by the visuals only. And now we learn about a disproportionate effort to create a visual. So it's easy to see how a comment that points out this discrepancy, resonates with everyone who is halfway through their thousand daily cuts of UI punishment.
nallerooth 2y ago
I think the wallpaper is minimalistic, elegant.. and boring, which is why I usually end up using a wallpaper from KDE Plasma. https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest
- superasn 2y ago
  These are nice wallpapers. I hope this works with the Variety wallpaper manager.
- tmtvl 2y ago
  I grab pictures from Find47 (https://search.find47.jp/en https://search.find47.jp/en). They're licensed under CC-BY-4.0, which is nice.
xzjis 2y ago
They made a video showing off how it was made: https://youtu.be/ewmXizBqjl0 https://youtu.be/ewmXizBqjl0
- kennyadam 2y ago
  Yes, they did, it's embedded in the article you're ostensibly commenting on.
giljabeab 2y ago
Shame they went a little overboard with the smoke and post fx really. A cleaner sharper image would have been nice
- Krisando 2y ago
  > Shame they went a little overboard with the smoke and post fx really. A cleaner sharper image would have been nice Microsoft replaced it in 2019 with this one: https://static.miraheze.org/windowswallpaperwiki/9/99/Img0_%28Windows_10_1903%29.jpg https://static.miraheze.org/windowswallpaperwiki/9/99/Img0_%... I personally think the original is more interesting.
esjeon 2y ago
I've been spending a lot of time on photography (though mostly w/ film cameras) during recent years, and only recently realized this is actually photographed. (It took long because I'm a long-time Linux user, so I barely seen the image.) Many people say this would've been easier with VFX, but I disagree. The image has highly convincing details that would take a long time even for highly talented VFX artists to nail. Instead, with a camera, you can let the world do the work for you. The studio setup is also very simple (cardboard + acrylic panel + projector + fog) and easy to experiment with. I'm pretty sure photography was the right tool for the project.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Also pretty sure it was the fun tool for the project.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- kqr 2y ago
  Which details are you thinking of? I was under the impression that with ray tracing, physically based materials, and fluid dynamics our computers wouldn't be hard-pressed to realistically render a static scene with light (of varying coherence and other properties) going through a piece of plastic and hitting swirling fog. The parameters of the scene need to be set up, yes, but then it would be just as easy to generate a few thousand frames from it. Also it's easier to version control for experimentation.
  - kthartic 2y ago
    In 2015 (almost 10 years ago now) the tech probably wasn't as convincing as it is today. But I agree you could probably get like 90% there
    - xattt 2y ago
      The Stranger Things intro scene is CGI. Artists were consulted who originally created similar titles in the 80s with practical effects to see how they could do it too. The old-school artists said to just do it in CGI because that’s what they would have done.
schmidt_fifty 2y ago
I hope someone will one day talk about me the way corporate america talks about its logos.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  Yeah when I read things like this, I always sit in awed wonder for a moment, trying to figure out where these people are totally full of crap, or whether they really think about things this way, and are just very different than me.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    Too late to edit, but I meant to say *whether they are totally full of crap, ...
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Brand identity is a big thing
DonHopkins 2y ago
I love the way the smoke evokes Windows making your computer overheat, melt down, and burn up. I can almost smell it immolating.
- hhlh 2y ago
  Your comment does not make any sense. Windows is not known for making people's computers overheat and melt.
gonzo41 2y ago
Unpopular opinion, the windows logo peaked at 3.1. My only other though is that I'm surprised this many people were needed to take that photo.
- toast0 2y ago
  I never saw it in the wild, but the windows < 3 logo is pretty neat. But the typography is serif heavy which lots of people don't like.
trojanalert 2y ago
This is so over-engineered, it tells you that when you have billions, you do the most whacky things. A 5-minute VFX job will yield the same results. But no, there's so much f*k you money, they had to do this.
- Pawka 2y ago
  That was my first impression too. Curious what is the cost of wallpaper.
- taejavu 2y ago
  I would love to see the results of your 5 minute VFX job.
- mabster 2y ago
  My favourite is a production team spending millions on something trying to make it look like a home movie, etc.
- blowski 2y ago
  Traditionally, one of Microsoft's weaknesses was how crappy it looked against Apple. Maybe they are trying to say "we care a lot about making this look good".
- high_na_euv 2y ago
  On the other hand this will be shown to bilions of people almost everyday as a front screen of Windows
  - jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
    I hope that the artists creating the image knew that whatever they submitted would be the most displayed image worldwide, for a couple of years.
- JusticeJuice 2y ago
  The cost of this shoot would pale in comparison to the marketing budget.
jonplackett 2y ago
Shame MS don’t spend this much time on effort on… every other part of their design for everything.
- simmerup 2y ago
  They do, that’s why they have like 5 competing design languages
- pompino 2y ago
  They don't need to because you can't argue with success. They continue to have the dominant product in the space for several decades.
  - isametry 2y ago
    Successful product != well-designed product. Microsoft got Windows where it is by having no sense of self-respect and willing to play the B2B race to the bottom. And it remains dominant thanks to decades' worth of legacy software that needs to continue running. So that's cheapness and momentum. If Windows was ever a beautiful product, it certainly isn't now. It would never become popular today in its current shape and principles.
    - pompino 2y ago
      >Successful product != well-designed product. Anyone can say that about any product. That doesn't make it true. Windows is a successful product that satisfies a need that people and businesses have. You can't fake dollar bills. >Microsoft got Windows where it is by having no sense of self-respect and willing to play the B2B race to the bottom. And it remains dominant thanks to decades' worth of legacy software that needs to continue running. >So that's cheapness and momentum. >If Windows was ever a beautiful product, it certainly isn't now. It would never become popular today in its current shape and principles. I'd rather sell a hundred million copies than convince some randos on the internet that my software is "beautiful".
- ZuLuuuuuu 2y ago
rambambram 2y ago
Recently I came across this minimal Linux logo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnu-linux_minimalistic_logo.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnu-linux_minimalist... Although I like the 'amateuristic' style of the old Tux, I must say this new minimal penguin looks really good.
- Clamchop 2y ago
  Appears to be apeing the circular emblems of recent versions of macOS.
w4rh4wk5 2y ago
Something I find deeply funny about this is the amount of work invested here just to have the default background quality setting in Windows 10 still be < 100%. That's the Microsoft I am used to ^^
- rjmunro 2y ago
  What is the "default background quality setting"? (I'm not a windows user)
  - benjaminpv 2y ago
    In Windows when you set a wallpaper it (sometimes) silently transcodes the one you selected into a new, smaller version. It doesn't always, there's a heuristic, but it's assumed it happens to prevent people from selecting a 1TB terapixel photo and have it destroy the machine. Anyway, since it transcodes the WP into a JPEG, it has the ability to select a compression ratio. That ratio is pretty famously < 100% and as a result there's some degenerate cases where a wallpaper that looks good when viewed in the filesystem looks terrible when set to the background. https://superuser.com/questions/1377883/how-to-prevent-wallpaper-compression-in-windows-10 https://superuser.com/questions/1377883/how-to-prevent-wallp...
    - Scharkenberg 2y ago
      The size threshold is now at 25 MB, I think.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      By far the most appropriate use of the word "degenerate" in the derogatory sense.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      I've seen machines which needed to swap to show the desktop, because the wallpaper was a high/true-colour BMP and it was like half the memory the machine had!
- 2y ago
NietTim 2y ago
Never knew, always assumed it was just a render. Very cool!
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Same here. And I think it was the purpose to make peopel assume that
sneak 2y ago
The guy who did this also did some of the incredible work on Tron 2. I’m a big fan.
- LoganDark 2y ago
  Tron: Ares, the upcoming sequel to Tron: Legacy? Or a different Tron 2?
  - sneak 2y ago
    No, I meant Tron: Legacy. The second Tron film. I didn’t know they were doing a third one.
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      I've never seen someone call Tron: Legacy "Tron 2". TIL.
flobosg 2y ago
A bit more information about the default Windows 10 wallpapers: https://www.raykovich.com/project/windows-imagery https://www.raykovich.com/project/windows-imagery
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
This rather speaks against Microsoft than for them. There was zero sense in creating a physical installation to capture it. The result feels digital and should have been digital. This speaks of Microsoft's poor planning and bad execution of plans and ideas.
lordgrenville 2y ago
When I saw the headline I confused it with the one from XP [0], and was imagining a team constructing that hill, laying the grass, etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_(image) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_(image)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fredley 2y ago
  See also: The search for Autumn https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/02/autumn200702 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/02/autumn200702
  - devsatish 2y ago
    That’s a cool read! Followed the VF article and eventually landed on this Reddit post where they shared the full res. https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/s2i9ta/finally_windows_xps_autumn_wallpaper_in_full_res/#lightbox https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/s2i9ta/finally_w...
    - another2another 2y ago
      An interesting read, which led me to lookup Kilbride in CA, and found it's even highlighted on Google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place//@43.4246699,-79.9457692,15z?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place//@43.4246699,-79.9457692,1...
- duckmysick 2y ago
  More details about the Bliss wallpaper: https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Bliss https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Bliss > With Bliss, Microsoft went a step further than merely licensing it: they bought the full rights to the image meaning no company would ever be able to license the photo from Corbis again, as the image was often used as part of XP's marketing and the Luna theme is modelled around its color scheme. It was purchased for an undisclosed amount of money in the low six figures; O'Rear cannot reveal the exact amount without violating a non disclosure agreement. He did not receive the full cost as Corbis handled the sale. As a result of its Microsoft acquisition, it was permanently removed from Corbis' website and has never been available on Getty Images or other sites that Corbis cross-licensed photos to. The vertical shot was also included in the acquisition, as O'Rear cannot release it due to his agreement with Microsoft.
usrbinbash 2y ago
That's a lot of effort for something god knows how many people change as pretty much the first thing after they first login to a new system.
d--b 2y ago
Oh, how I wish my cloud workstation was just a HD cam pointed at boxes somewhere in Pennsylvania, and people just changing things very quickly.
LoganDark 2y ago
The alternative versions of this wallpaper are extremely pretty. I think it's awesome that they've been made available like this, I just wish they were available at a higher resolution. Would love to use one of the red or purple ones on my 4K display.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
djeastm 2y ago
I certainly can appreciate the artistry in building it and also I'm happy that the artists found joy in making it, but I can't help but wonder why MS bothered.
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
[flagged]
auxfil 2y ago
[dead]
snowwrestler 2y ago
Also interesting: Brian Eno on his work composing one of the Windows startup sounds: > Q: How did you come to compose "The Microsoft Sound"? > A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it." https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/q-and-a-with-brian-eno-2979740.php https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/q-and-a-with-br...
- Lutzb 2y ago
  Slowing down the Windows 95 startup sound 23 times makes it sound even more Brian Eno. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  > The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long." This bit has always stuck in my head. Makes his longnow foundation work make more sense. Always find it wild that microsoft takes the time and spends the money on such tiny details in their products.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
I also built a wall (with literal wallpaper even!) in order to create the cover for a genealogy book that I created. I knew what a wanted — an old fashioned looking wall with old-timey pictures of my relatives hanging on the wall. I also wanted a mantel with more photos standing on it that would run along near the bottom of the book cover. I tried initially creating the cover in a paint program — layering elements together (wallpaper, photo frames, photos), adding drop shadows, but it wasn't coming together. So I went to Lowe's and bought a 4' x 8' sheet of 2" insulating foam or some such, bought what looked like the oldest-fashioned wall paper, a gallon of paint, etc. In the end I messed up the lighting, but I suppose that is something I am still learning in photography. But I still liked the result. https://imgur.com/a/12VN4sI https://imgur.com/a/12VN4sI
- bonki 2y ago
  The lightning might indeed not be the best but I really like it, well done!
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  Awesome! My home studio doesn't have plain, unobstructed walls for some simple shots, and while a paper roll backdrop is a good substitute, sometimes you want a wall, or a corner, or you just want to use wallpaper. So I built a massive construction with doubled-up cardboard sheet, girders made with pallet corners, these gigantic split pin things and hot glue, and then I spray-mounted wallpaper on it. I also did it at the wrong time of year, when the air was still too damp and the heating needed to be on, so it didn't last an enormously long time before things rippled, because it turns out cardboard has some quite organic behaviours in moist air. So it was almost a failure. But I'd absolutely do it again, replacing the cardboard with foamcore or thicker insulating board. It was a really fascinating, liberating process to take that much control over the process, and I've been doing similar since, assembling my own photographic tools to a level that looks a bit like obsession. I think maybe many software developers here don't understand the parallels between doing this sort of thing and assembling your "stack" for a few applications. A true photographer's "tools" barely even start with the camera. There's a whole array of tools beyond that, beyond peripherals, that extend into the scene or into methodology.
- 2y ago
sandworm101 2y ago
We must not forget the legal side of this. Microsoft knows everything about intellectual property rights. If I were going to design a logo to be displayed literally billions of times across every screen running the windows OS I would make very sure it was beyond any conceivable infringement allegation. A generated smoke image might be up for some allegation of copying, that the generated smoke or some other aspect was "created" by the software. A physical photo shoot means zero possibility of any outsider having any contribution in the final image.
layer8 2y ago
I always found that wallpaper a weird choice, being dark-depressing and uninviting to the average user.
- fckgw 2y ago
  I believe Windows 10 was the first with a dark mode built in. Maybe to compliment that?
  - layer8 2y ago
    There are ways to make a dark background that looks inviting, but this is not it. And it has enough bright highlights to make it uncomfortable when you actually like to have a dark screen in a dark environment, so it’s also not a particularly good dark-mode background.
footlose_3815 2y ago
It's a really cool project, but the video presentation was just horrible to watch. All I really wanted was to see the fixture in plain form, but they tease you the whole time. * Blasting loud music * Saturated with bragging, useless testimonials * Blurring-in was more common than actually seeing the work * Cutting away from the work to a human too quickly Maybe I'm coming off as miserable, but this video was totally unsatisfying to watch.
entropie 2y ago
I have an vertical monitor (1080x1920) I use mainly for browsing and the site is basicially not readable: https://i.imgur.com/5Klt2Ls.png https://i.imgur.com/5Klt2Ls.png I scrolled to the bottom for contact information but it keeps loading stuff so I never reach it.
- criddell 2y ago
  A useful keyboard shortcut is ctrl-end. You might have to hit it a couple of times, but it will get you to the bottom. I’m on Windows, but I’m guessing macOS and many Linux DEs have something similar.
  - entropie 2y ago
    Yeah I know, besides my keyboard has no physcial end/home key. But if websites do stuff like this, I usually hit Ctrl+w because my time is to precious to fight bad UIs.
partdavid 2y ago
If you have a chance and are interested in the subject, I highly recommend the Musée Cinéma & Miniature in Lyon, France: <https://www.museeminiatureetcinema.fr/ https://www.museeminiatureetcinema.fr/>. A lot of the promotional material highlights the sets, costumes and props from films on display, and they are certainly interesting, but far more interesting to me are the two floors of cinematic miniatures--diorama after diorama of physically-built miniature sets used as "virtual backgrounds" before they were mostly generated using CGI art (which I do appreciate). They are remarkable and remarkably interesting as pieces of art as well as cinema history. This story reminded me of this--sometimes the effect you want needs a tactile realism that is hard to replicate digitally, and is rarely as neat and toy-like.
1-6 2y ago
This wallpaper is definitely less appealing without the story to go with it behind the scenes.
larodi 2y ago
So much for generative art in product design.
tdeck 2y ago
This reminds me of the famous photo from filming the Star Wars intro text: https://www.metaflix.com/behind-the-scenes-of-star-wars-opening-crawl/ https://www.metaflix.com/behind-the-scenes-of-star-wars-open...
dantondwa 2y ago
Note that the latest version of this wallpaper is CGI. [1] [1] https://mspoweruser.com/new-default-windows-10-light-theme-wallpaper-now-available-at-wallpaperhub-at-4k-resolution/ https://mspoweruser.com/new-default-windows-10-light-theme-w...
725686 2y ago
The very first thing I did when installing Windows 10 was changing the desktop image. It amazes me how many resources companies put into stuff that users don't give a peanut.
metaxy2 2y ago
I don't know if there's a name for this genre of photography (it's not exactly "abstract" since clearly things are being represented), but another example is the cover of Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News [0], which looks like a digital drawing or composite but was physically built and photographed by bandleader Isaac Brock. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_News_for_People_Who_Love_Bad_News#/media/File:MMGoodNews5075.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_News_for_People_Who_Love_...
JeremyNT 2y ago
Previous discussion on HN (2019): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854161
geon 2y ago
I saw a photographer who mimicked the style of early 90s raytracing. Chrome spheres on checkerboards and such.
dhosek 2y ago
Reminds me of someone once asking me how I got the hand-drawn pencil look to the type on an article in the typography magazine I published about the T-26 type foundry. I drew it by hand with a pencil and scanned it. I had another article headline where I commissioned an artist to carve the headline in stone and had it photographed for the printer.
ErigmolCt 2y ago
It's remarkable to know the process behind this work of art truely
i2shar 2y ago
Brilliant! Just today, I was listening to a panel of world class artists being asked (now trite) questions on AI taking over their jobs and they concluded something like: "For mediocrity, turn to AI. If you want masters, call us".
kra34 2y ago
should somebody tell them about ML models?
JoeyBananas 2y ago
It was tacky and horrible from day 1.
classified 2y ago
Seeing that they put that much attention to detail into a wallpaper, it seems petty to get hung up on the fact that their software is a shit show. So it's all forgiven.
tmtvl 2y ago
When I was young we had a PC running Windows 3.1.1 (not the first computer I remember using, but the first one whose OS I remember the name of), and I recall it having this neat feature where you could draw an image in a tiny box and it would tile it across the screen as background image. It probably wouldn't work so well for a "4k" monitor, but I thought it neat at the time.
deleted 2y ago
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_8j50 2y ago
It still doesn't measure up to xp's rolling hills or just about any macos default wallpaper. Nature is really pretty and hard to compete against. Small things like this say a lot about the overall product design philosophy in my opinion.
jononomo 2y ago
Wow, they must have spent $1 million to make that wallpaper but now you could do it in 15 seconds with ChatGPT.
resuresu 2y ago
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checkyoursudo 2y ago
> Our approach involved a live-action shoot using different variables and customizations. What does "live-action shoot" mean in this statement? Wouldn't this just be "still photography"? When I think of live action, I think of people or at least ... action?

773 points by onhacker 2y ago

ninetyninenine 2y ago

Why do this when you can get an identical picture from photoshop?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Why do this when you can get an identical picture from photoshop? It gives it character and helps ensure you'll get good artists to work on it. Though now I wish they'd made that clear by making the intermediate shots desktop defaults.
rizky05 2y ago
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fsloth 2y ago
If you can get kick-ass smoke and particles like that in Photoshop out-of-the-box please do tell me how.
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  Typically you use photos. Photoshop does not come out of the box with photos.

all2 2y ago

This is one of my favorite examples of practical effects. I hate windows as an OS, but I still admire this every time I log in at work.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
Why wouldn't you set a better background image?
- sanderjd 2y ago
  I think this is actually an interesting question. I think I've been leaving on the default desktop on any computer I use, for over a decade now. It's not just that, it's every kind of setting. I just don't futz around with things that don't actively get in the way of my work anymore. I used to love to tweak everything, to try to pour my personality into a sweet computer setup, but after using computers for fifteen years or so, I just lost interest in that.
  - all2 2y ago
    I've settled on a slightly custom setup based on Plasma and i3wm. It involves a single systemd unit running in user space. I get batteries included desktop environment and a tiling window manager I can tolerate. I also set up zsh+powerlevel10k. In all it takes me about 20 minutes to configure.

walteweiss 2y ago

[flagged]

0xcoffee 2y ago
In Section 03 there is a video showing the physical setup.
- walteweiss 2y ago
  Thank you, I tend to ignore videos when on mobile. Checked it from my laptop. Feels useless to me, to setup the whole physical thing for the sake of photo that could be just rendered. But to each their own.
throawayonthe 2y ago
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Takennickname 2y ago
You weren't attentive.

disillusioned 2y ago

Despite having seen this image thousands of times, I never considered it might have originated from practical effects, even if it was composited. Very cool. The composite sounds like no picnic, either: >With over 3,000 photos captured from the shoot, the initial stage of the composite was an exercise in patience as Munko diligently went through all of the assets and picked the best ones suited for the final image. He then dusted off his old 40 year-old designer fingers and brought them into Photoshop where he tirelessly combined exposures at a blistering 9k resolution. He first build up the base image, which was obviously the foundation for the hero still, flushing out the core logo design with a variety of laser-infused illuminations.. These core layers were varied, ranging from minimal rim-lighting to a multitude of laser lines fanning through the central portions of the logo, lighting up the volumetric haze in a variety of artful ways. Compositing all these layers together was an extremely iterative process and was done in collaboration with Daddy Bear Art Director Ryan Vulk and Creative Director Christopher Ashworth, the two senior Directors on the Windows Brand Team. Once the lovelies at the Windows team and up the ladder at Microsoft were happy with the aesthetics of the logo foundation, Munko then composited in the environmental passes, which consisted of separately shot layers of smoke and haze to create a very moody palette and accentuated the qualities of the practical approach. The final touches were the lens flares, which were again shot as separate passes but were flaring the lens with a light source positioned in the same place as the laser projector, so the flares lined up perfectly with all the other passes. The final grade was applied to bring everything into the signature ‘Microsoft Blue’ palette, but still leaving a tonal range that kept everyone happy. The final 9k file was then sent to the magicians at XYZ Creative Production Agency, who specialize in high-end photo retouching and did the final optimizations on the hero image.

ghusbands 2y ago
This comment is just a copy/paste of a quarter of the article.
- eganist 2y ago
  It looks like it was just a mis-quote. All the paragraphs below the quoted one are included as part of the quote but don't begin with the leading >

puttycat 2y ago

The technical ingenuity is impressive. I personally find this visual quite cold and soulless, compared to previous Windows wallpapers, mostly XP's of course. For me this also coincided with Windows becoming completely useless and my moving to a Mac.

vsnf 2y ago
There was definitely a kind of warm, optimistic vibe that came with the Windows XP wallpaper. The whole UI language of the OS was similar too, with bubbly blues and greens everywhere. I suppose it captured a kind of positive cultural attitude towards computing.
- tavavex 2y ago
  I think it was aimed at making the OS look less threatening and complicated to a new user. Then again, people did complain about it being a "Fisher-Price UI", so maybe this overwhelmingly positive perception is a result of people spending so much time with the OS and getting used to the way things were.
  - vsnf 2y ago
    I do recall the Fisher-Price complaints. As I recall it mostly came from the Linux (or Linux-inclined) crowd. I never really understood the complaints, though it was common enough that I must have just been missing something. But really, I don't get whats wrong with a functional UI that's also friendly and inviting.
    - amatecha 2y ago
      Just today I was thinking about XP and the phrase "Fisher-Price" came to mind. I liked XP's UI, even as whimsical and toy-like (and easy to make fun of) as it was. I'd prefer if computers and OSes retained the whimsy and character of that late-90's-early-2000's era of Win XP and the colourful iMacs, etc.
- userbinator 2y ago

behnamoh 2y ago

I remember the good old days when I would spend so much time choosing the right wallpapers for my PC and phone. Nowadays, the wallpaper is completely hidden from me because I am constantly switching between apps on macOS thanks to my Raycast custom keyboard shortcuts and I never see whatever picture I set... It's a weird feeling. Kinda like letting go of the desktop-oriented computer in favor of window-manager-oriented. There's beauty in the former, and simplicity and elegance in the latter.

esafak 2y ago
I use the Unsplash MacOS app to rotate it. https://unsplash.com/apps https://unsplash.com/apps
HenryBemis 2y ago
I used (like many many many) to do this. And one day I thought to myself.. hey.. that greenish background color of Win NT was cool (R0, G128, B128), wasn't it? And then the Windows 2000 blue.. oh how beautiful.. (R60, G110, B166). And later in life i switched to total black with dark mode for all my devices (and my eyes thanked me for it :)

hulitu 2y ago

> Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed And then photoshopped. /s You always need 2 programs in Windows to do a thing right. /s

msoad 2y ago

I don’t want to be a fanboy but the wallpaper is so soulless and industrial. I like how Apple always tries to bring nature to computing with wallpapers and screensavers. For example https://iso.500px.com/iphone-6-milky-way-wallpaper-interview/ https://iso.500px.com/iphone-6-milky-way-wallpaper-interview... Also the Ariel videos of nature and cities for Apple TV and Mac is another example. Windows feels so corporate and boring tbh

ggm 2y ago
"The apple wallpaper was physically built (by nature) and photographed."
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gizajob 2y ago
Yeah I do kind of love the current dynamic "different every time" Mac OS wallpaper / splash screen. It's corporate Apple but still great, and infinitely better than MS's Borg-like contentless flatness.
- oefrha 2y ago
  The Windows login screen has been showing dynamic landscape photos for a loooong time. Of course, the part where you accidentally click on one of the search labels (?) and it opens Bing in Edge (previously IE), which is one of the three hundred ways you can accidentally open Edge/Bing in Windows, is not cool at all.
- npteljes 2y ago
  Windows can have Bing Wallpaper, which changes the wallpaper every day. It's not installed by default, but it's a fun offering from Microsoft.
amatecha 2y ago
Nice, so many good photos in that post! Thanks for sharing :D
2y ago

Kwpolska 2y ago

The original Windows 10 wallpaper. In a later release, it was replaced by a brighter and cleaner version that was drawn on a computer. I personally prefer the later revision.

noname120 2y ago
> replaced by a brighter and cleaner version that was drawn on a computer Can you source this statement?
- leoedin 2y ago
  I went looking - and there's a wiki dedicated to just this topic. https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Windows_10 https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Windows_10 It does seem that the original was replaced in May 2019 by a brighter version, although whether it was drawn on a computer or not is anyone's guess.
  - jerbear4328 2y ago
    According to the wiki, it was not drawn on a computer, but created again in the same way as the first. I personally prefer the darker original, but most Windows users use light mode. It's cool that it has 25 people listed in the credits for what seems like a such a simple image. > GMUNK was also involved in this version, and stated that it was created under the same methodology as the previous version. https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Hero#Later_version https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Hero#Later_versio...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

asdiojadiosdijo 2y ago

[flagged]

meisenhus 2y ago

As impressive as this looks (and is), the effort strikes me as monumentally oversized. This particular picture, with its straight lines and everything artificial, could have just as well come out of a renderer. For substantially less cost, the result would have been the same. Doesn't mean you don't need to have the creative vision first. But executing it with a camera and a light/laser/fog set and all the effort that went into it, seriously, just take a talented vfx artist and you get the same result. It's different with nature photography and especially with humans. But there was nothing natural with this image.

guitarlimeo 2y ago
But that's exactly what's interesting with this! Everything can't just be viewed through the lens of costs, the effort to make something unnatural like this in real life is part of the art itself. If you're just looking at the end result, yeah, same result could've been achieved with VFX with a lot less costs, but it also wouldn't have as much value.
deleted 2y ago
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dag11 2y ago
That's like saying why should anyone at all make music, art, hire actors, etc., when A.I. will be able to do all of these tasks identically over the next couple years (partially already). The human element is important. Because we're humans.
- rizky05 2y ago
  [dead]
- aniviacat 2y ago
  Once AI is capable of delivering similar quality, many musicians and actors will indeed be replaced. But until this technology exists, musicians and actors will continue being employed.
deleted 2y ago

asimovfan 2y ago

Although this is great somehow in my opinion this was the best windoze wallpaper It somehow captures my soul, perhaps because i was very young when i saw it https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fm0zhfbiq61v21.png%3Fwidth%3D1080%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3371c9c68bca464e4939fed3cb4a8b3c32ef5cf6 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

sdeyerle 2y ago
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't this actually the installer background screen that got repurposed as an option for a wallpaper?
- MrJagil 2y ago
  The linked post is titled "Background image from the windows 95 setup window" https://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/comments/bicyok/background_image_from_the_windows_95_setup_window/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallpapers/comments/bicyok/backgrou...
magic_hamster 2y ago
As already mentioned it was the install setup, and it's my favorite Windows background to date as well. It's actually a 2 bit image with all blue and black, with dithering. It's very comforting in my opinion.
paulmooreparks 2y ago
That Microsoft Natural Elite on the left side of the image is still the only keyboard I use, or will use. I have a stack of four backups in the closet.
edvards 2y ago
Is there a name for this visual style?
- reddalo 2y ago
  I also wonder this. It's a recurring style from '90s software.

huygens6363 2y ago

I hate myself for saying it, but this feels like an artistic variation on "we spent 500 hours manually perfecting React button animations" or "I built a Lisp so we can have more interesting configuration files for our ... todo list app". I guess I'm jaded. > Creative Director: GMUNK > Managing Director, Live Action: Oliver Fuselier > Managing Partner, Digital: Dustin Callif > Executive Producer: Robert Helphand > Head of Production: Amy DeLossa > Producer: Mary Church > Associate Producer: John Stern > Production Supervisor: Liz Welonek > etc ... I mean, come on.

cl3misch 2y ago
You're not wrong, but the production team might be more justified when you account for the huge number of users seeing this image. Would a synthetic image sufficed? Yes. Can it be worth it to invest in artists creating something nice if millions of people see it? Yes.
- huygens6363 2y ago
  Bah. You're right. I'm being obtuse and need more coffee. Nerding out on things is fun, my whole life is based on it. I guess I feel some rivalry with the artistic world. Maybe it's jealousy.
- autoexec 2y ago
  It's kind of sad how often the best way for artists to get paid and have their work seen is by creating corporate advertising. At least in this case it's just a pretty logo and not a direct lie or manipulation.
microtonal 2y ago
I don't know. I think a nice wallpaper can cheer up the day and make a system more lovely. Seems relevant when it reaches so many people. However, I have never really liked this wallpaper (the few times I have seen it as a non-Windows user). The random desertscapes and dynamic wallpapers in macOS are really much more appealing.
omnimus 2y ago

rossant 2y ago

(2015)

dang 2y ago
Added above. Thanks!

foreverobama 2y ago

[dead]

kookamamie 2y ago

To me as a photographer and as computer vision expert, this sounds wayyyyyy over-engineered and -produced. I get that there's a big vision (and budget) involved, but c'mon!

UberFly 2y ago
Yea, I appreciate their dedication but the end-product doesn't equal the effort when Jane in XBox 3d effects department probably could have done this during her lunch break.
- omnimus 2y ago
  For one still sure but they have made lots of movies from that set that were used for promotion. At some point this is a lot easier to get so much much material and quick variations.
rjzzleep 2y ago
If only they had the same dedication to keep ads out of the core OS.
cranium 2y ago
You have to take into consideration that the default wallpaper is arguably the most seen picture in the entire world.
- rob74 2y ago
  Yup... but, if everyone thinks it's a rendering, and you could have saved tons of money by actually rendering it instead of doing what these guys did, it's still a waste of money if you ask me...
  - manuelmoreale 2y ago
    That can be said for many other artistic creations. But if you ask me, the fact that it was so elaborate adds something to it. The end result might be the same but the intentions and the process to get there matter. Also, waste of money. We’re talking Microsoft. It’s not like those money we’re going to be spent on charity. They paid some creative people to do creative work. We should appreciate that.

jmprspret 2y ago

Gmunk is awesome

diego_sandoval 2y ago

Whenever I have to use Windows, I feel dirty, like Microsoft's filth is slowly contaminating my spirit through my interaction with the computer. So, the last thing that I would want to set as a wallpaper would be a reminder of that fact that I'm using Windows.

Zecc 2y ago
I don't know about you, but more often than not I have maximized windows covering the background image. The thing which reminds me I'm using Windows is the start button. Not to mention.. everything else.

sschueller 2y ago

Very cool but I would prefer spending all that time and money on building a better product and what they delivered. This is like a startup spending hours upon hours on logo and name instead of actually building something.

column 2y ago
This is such an ignorant take. The default wallpaper is seen by millions if not billions of people. Many never change it. It's an important part of the branding. The total cost of the shoot, including equipment, salaries, the studio, etc. is NOTHING to Microsoft and its marketing budget. It's not like they had to prioritize this over anything else, they are printing money left and right, they are a trillion dollar company and the default wallpaper is a key aspect of how people see their core product, Windows. It would be disastrous of them to ship with a sub-par wallpaper and in what world would the money "saved" would make a difference to "build a better product"?
- sschueller 2y ago
  Have you used the Office365 Suite lately?
  - Scharkenberg 2y ago
    Yes, it's still the best office suite in the market.
- UweSchmidt 2y ago
  Does Microsoft have plenty of money to do anything? Sure. Does the trillion dollar company spend an appropriate effort on the product itself? Certainly not! The issue is this: From Windows 10 and up, almost every interaction with the UI is a little bit broken, and I could fill pages just describing things that used to work just right in Windows 7 and earlier. It appears the Windows UI is now designed and approved by the visuals only. And now we learn about a disproportionate effort to create a visual. So it's easy to see how a comment that points out this discrepancy, resonates with everyone who is halfway through their thousand daily cuts of UI punishment.

nallerooth 2y ago

I think the wallpaper is minimalistic, elegant.. and boring, which is why I usually end up using a wallpaper from KDE Plasma. https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest

superasn 2y ago
These are nice wallpapers. I hope this works with the Variety wallpaper manager.
tmtvl 2y ago
I grab pictures from Find47 (https://search.find47.jp/en https://search.find47.jp/en). They're licensed under CC-BY-4.0, which is nice.

xzjis 2y ago

They made a video showing off how it was made: https://youtu.be/ewmXizBqjl0 https://youtu.be/ewmXizBqjl0

kennyadam 2y ago
Yes, they did, it's embedded in the article you're ostensibly commenting on.

giljabeab 2y ago

Shame they went a little overboard with the smoke and post fx really. A cleaner sharper image would have been nice

Krisando 2y ago
> Shame they went a little overboard with the smoke and post fx really. A cleaner sharper image would have been nice Microsoft replaced it in 2019 with this one: https://static.miraheze.org/windowswallpaperwiki/9/99/Img0_%28Windows_10_1903%29.jpg https://static.miraheze.org/windowswallpaperwiki/9/99/Img0_%... I personally think the original is more interesting.

esjeon 2y ago

I've been spending a lot of time on photography (though mostly w/ film cameras) during recent years, and only recently realized this is actually photographed. (It took long because I'm a long-time Linux user, so I barely seen the image.) Many people say this would've been easier with VFX, but I disagree. The image has highly convincing details that would take a long time even for highly talented VFX artists to nail. Instead, with a camera, you can let the world do the work for you. The studio setup is also very simple (cardboard + acrylic panel + projector + fog) and easy to experiment with. I'm pretty sure photography was the right tool for the project.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Also pretty sure it was the fun tool for the project.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
kqr 2y ago
Which details are you thinking of? I was under the impression that with ray tracing, physically based materials, and fluid dynamics our computers wouldn't be hard-pressed to realistically render a static scene with light (of varying coherence and other properties) going through a piece of plastic and hitting swirling fog. The parameters of the scene need to be set up, yes, but then it would be just as easy to generate a few thousand frames from it. Also it's easier to version control for experimentation.
- kthartic 2y ago
  In 2015 (almost 10 years ago now) the tech probably wasn't as convincing as it is today. But I agree you could probably get like 90% there
  - xattt 2y ago
    The Stranger Things intro scene is CGI. Artists were consulted who originally created similar titles in the 80s with practical effects to see how they could do it too. The old-school artists said to just do it in CGI because that’s what they would have done.

schmidt_fifty 2y ago

I hope someone will one day talk about me the way corporate america talks about its logos.

sanderjd 2y ago
Yeah when I read things like this, I always sit in awed wonder for a moment, trying to figure out where these people are totally full of crap, or whether they really think about things this way, and are just very different than me.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  Too late to edit, but I meant to say *whether they are totally full of crap, ...
ErigmolCt 2y ago
Brand identity is a big thing

DonHopkins 2y ago

I love the way the smoke evokes Windows making your computer overheat, melt down, and burn up. I can almost smell it immolating.

hhlh 2y ago
Your comment does not make any sense. Windows is not known for making people's computers overheat and melt.

gonzo41 2y ago

Unpopular opinion, the windows logo peaked at 3.1. My only other though is that I'm surprised this many people were needed to take that photo.

toast0 2y ago
I never saw it in the wild, but the windows < 3 logo is pretty neat. But the typography is serif heavy which lots of people don't like.

trojanalert 2y ago

This is so over-engineered, it tells you that when you have billions, you do the most whacky things. A 5-minute VFX job will yield the same results. But no, there's so much f*k you money, they had to do this.

Pawka 2y ago
That was my first impression too. Curious what is the cost of wallpaper.
taejavu 2y ago
I would love to see the results of your 5 minute VFX job.
mabster 2y ago
My favourite is a production team spending millions on something trying to make it look like a home movie, etc.
blowski 2y ago
Traditionally, one of Microsoft's weaknesses was how crappy it looked against Apple. Maybe they are trying to say "we care a lot about making this look good".
high_na_euv 2y ago
On the other hand this will be shown to bilions of people almost everyday as a front screen of Windows
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  I hope that the artists creating the image knew that whatever they submitted would be the most displayed image worldwide, for a couple of years.
JusticeJuice 2y ago
The cost of this shoot would pale in comparison to the marketing budget.

jonplackett 2y ago

Shame MS don’t spend this much time on effort on… every other part of their design for everything.

simmerup 2y ago
They do, that’s why they have like 5 competing design languages
pompino 2y ago
They don't need to because you can't argue with success. They continue to have the dominant product in the space for several decades.
- isametry 2y ago
  Successful product != well-designed product. Microsoft got Windows where it is by having no sense of self-respect and willing to play the B2B race to the bottom. And it remains dominant thanks to decades' worth of legacy software that needs to continue running. So that's cheapness and momentum. If Windows was ever a beautiful product, it certainly isn't now. It would never become popular today in its current shape and principles.
  - pompino 2y ago
    >Successful product != well-designed product. Anyone can say that about any product. That doesn't make it true. Windows is a successful product that satisfies a need that people and businesses have. You can't fake dollar bills. >Microsoft got Windows where it is by having no sense of self-respect and willing to play the B2B race to the bottom. And it remains dominant thanks to decades' worth of legacy software that needs to continue running. >So that's cheapness and momentum. >If Windows was ever a beautiful product, it certainly isn't now. It would never become popular today in its current shape and principles. I'd rather sell a hundred million copies than convince some randos on the internet that my software is "beautiful".
ZuLuuuuuu 2y ago

rambambram 2y ago

Recently I came across this minimal Linux logo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnu-linux_minimalistic_logo.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnu-linux_minimalist... Although I like the 'amateuristic' style of the old Tux, I must say this new minimal penguin looks really good.

Clamchop 2y ago
Appears to be apeing the circular emblems of recent versions of macOS.

w4rh4wk5 2y ago

Something I find deeply funny about this is the amount of work invested here just to have the default background quality setting in Windows 10 still be < 100%. That's the Microsoft I am used to ^^

rjmunro 2y ago
What is the "default background quality setting"? (I'm not a windows user)
- benjaminpv 2y ago
  In Windows when you set a wallpaper it (sometimes) silently transcodes the one you selected into a new, smaller version. It doesn't always, there's a heuristic, but it's assumed it happens to prevent people from selecting a 1TB terapixel photo and have it destroy the machine. Anyway, since it transcodes the WP into a JPEG, it has the ability to select a compression ratio. That ratio is pretty famously < 100% and as a result there's some degenerate cases where a wallpaper that looks good when viewed in the filesystem looks terrible when set to the background. https://superuser.com/questions/1377883/how-to-prevent-wallpaper-compression-in-windows-10 https://superuser.com/questions/1377883/how-to-prevent-wallp...
  - Scharkenberg 2y ago
    The size threshold is now at 25 MB, I think.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    By far the most appropriate use of the word "degenerate" in the derogatory sense.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    I've seen machines which needed to swap to show the desktop, because the wallpaper was a high/true-colour BMP and it was like half the memory the machine had!
2y ago

NietTim 2y ago

Never knew, always assumed it was just a render. Very cool!

ErigmolCt 2y ago
Same here. And I think it was the purpose to make peopel assume that

sneak 2y ago

The guy who did this also did some of the incredible work on Tron 2. I’m a big fan.

LoganDark 2y ago
Tron: Ares, the upcoming sequel to Tron: Legacy? Or a different Tron 2?
- sneak 2y ago
  No, I meant Tron: Legacy. The second Tron film. I didn’t know they were doing a third one.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    I've never seen someone call Tron: Legacy "Tron 2". TIL.

flobosg 2y ago

A bit more information about the default Windows 10 wallpapers: https://www.raykovich.com/project/windows-imagery https://www.raykovich.com/project/windows-imagery

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

This rather speaks against Microsoft than for them. There was zero sense in creating a physical installation to capture it. The result feels digital and should have been digital. This speaks of Microsoft's poor planning and bad execution of plans and ideas.

lordgrenville 2y ago

When I saw the headline I confused it with the one from XP [0], and was imagining a team constructing that hill, laying the grass, etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_(image) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_(image)

deleted 2y ago
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fredley 2y ago
See also: The search for Autumn https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/02/autumn200702 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/02/autumn200702
- devsatish 2y ago
  That’s a cool read! Followed the VF article and eventually landed on this Reddit post where they shared the full res. https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/s2i9ta/finally_windows_xps_autumn_wallpaper_in_full_res/#lightbox https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsxp/comments/s2i9ta/finally_w...
  - another2another 2y ago
    An interesting read, which led me to lookup Kilbride in CA, and found it's even highlighted on Google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place//@43.4246699,-79.9457692,15z?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place//@43.4246699,-79.9457692,1...
duckmysick 2y ago
More details about the Bliss wallpaper: https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Bliss https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Bliss > With Bliss, Microsoft went a step further than merely licensing it: they bought the full rights to the image meaning no company would ever be able to license the photo from Corbis again, as the image was often used as part of XP's marketing and the Luna theme is modelled around its color scheme. It was purchased for an undisclosed amount of money in the low six figures; O'Rear cannot reveal the exact amount without violating a non disclosure agreement. He did not receive the full cost as Corbis handled the sale. As a result of its Microsoft acquisition, it was permanently removed from Corbis' website and has never been available on Getty Images or other sites that Corbis cross-licensed photos to. The vertical shot was also included in the acquisition, as O'Rear cannot release it due to his agreement with Microsoft.

usrbinbash 2y ago

That's a lot of effort for something god knows how many people change as pretty much the first thing after they first login to a new system.

d--b 2y ago

Oh, how I wish my cloud workstation was just a HD cam pointed at boxes somewhere in Pennsylvania, and people just changing things very quickly.

LoganDark 2y ago

The alternative versions of this wallpaper are extremely pretty. I think it's awesome that they've been made available like this, I just wish they were available at a higher resolution. Would love to use one of the red or purple ones on my 4K display.

deleted 2y ago

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djeastm 2y ago

I certainly can appreciate the artistry in building it and also I'm happy that the artists found joy in making it, but I can't help but wonder why MS bothered.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago

[flagged]

auxfil 2y ago

[dead]

snowwrestler 2y ago

Also interesting: Brian Eno on his work composing one of the Windows startup sounds: > Q: How did you come to compose "The Microsoft Sound"? > A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, "Here's a specific problem -- solve it." https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/q-and-a-with-brian-eno-2979740.php https://www.sfgate.com/music/popquiz/article/q-and-a-with-br...

Lutzb 2y ago
Slowing down the Windows 95 startup sound 23 times makes it sound even more Brian Eno. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIfbdi41ho
jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
> The thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long." This bit has always stuck in my head. Makes his longnow foundation work make more sense. Always find it wild that microsoft takes the time and spends the money on such tiny details in their products.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

I also built a wall (with literal wallpaper even!) in order to create the cover for a genealogy book that I created. I knew what a wanted — an old fashioned looking wall with old-timey pictures of my relatives hanging on the wall. I also wanted a mantel with more photos standing on it that would run along near the bottom of the book cover. I tried initially creating the cover in a paint program — layering elements together (wallpaper, photo frames, photos), adding drop shadows, but it wasn't coming together. So I went to Lowe's and bought a 4' x 8' sheet of 2" insulating foam or some such, bought what looked like the oldest-fashioned wall paper, a gallon of paint, etc. In the end I messed up the lighting, but I suppose that is something I am still learning in photography. But I still liked the result. https://imgur.com/a/12VN4sI https://imgur.com/a/12VN4sI

bonki 2y ago
The lightning might indeed not be the best but I really like it, well done!
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
Awesome! My home studio doesn't have plain, unobstructed walls for some simple shots, and while a paper roll backdrop is a good substitute, sometimes you want a wall, or a corner, or you just want to use wallpaper. So I built a massive construction with doubled-up cardboard sheet, girders made with pallet corners, these gigantic split pin things and hot glue, and then I spray-mounted wallpaper on it. I also did it at the wrong time of year, when the air was still too damp and the heating needed to be on, so it didn't last an enormously long time before things rippled, because it turns out cardboard has some quite organic behaviours in moist air. So it was almost a failure. But I'd absolutely do it again, replacing the cardboard with foamcore or thicker insulating board. It was a really fascinating, liberating process to take that much control over the process, and I've been doing similar since, assembling my own photographic tools to a level that looks a bit like obsession. I think maybe many software developers here don't understand the parallels between doing this sort of thing and assembling your "stack" for a few applications. A true photographer's "tools" barely even start with the camera. There's a whole array of tools beyond that, beyond peripherals, that extend into the scene or into methodology.
2y ago

sandworm101 2y ago

We must not forget the legal side of this. Microsoft knows everything about intellectual property rights. If I were going to design a logo to be displayed literally billions of times across every screen running the windows OS I would make very sure it was beyond any conceivable infringement allegation. A generated smoke image might be up for some allegation of copying, that the generated smoke or some other aspect was "created" by the software. A physical photo shoot means zero possibility of any outsider having any contribution in the final image.

layer8 2y ago

I always found that wallpaper a weird choice, being dark-depressing and uninviting to the average user.

fckgw 2y ago
I believe Windows 10 was the first with a dark mode built in. Maybe to compliment that?
- layer8 2y ago
  There are ways to make a dark background that looks inviting, but this is not it. And it has enough bright highlights to make it uncomfortable when you actually like to have a dark screen in a dark environment, so it’s also not a particularly good dark-mode background.

footlose_3815 2y ago

It's a really cool project, but the video presentation was just horrible to watch. All I really wanted was to see the fixture in plain form, but they tease you the whole time. * Blasting loud music * Saturated with bragging, useless testimonials * Blurring-in was more common than actually seeing the work * Cutting away from the work to a human too quickly Maybe I'm coming off as miserable, but this video was totally unsatisfying to watch.

entropie 2y ago

I have an vertical monitor (1080x1920) I use mainly for browsing and the site is basicially not readable: https://i.imgur.com/5Klt2Ls.png https://i.imgur.com/5Klt2Ls.png I scrolled to the bottom for contact information but it keeps loading stuff so I never reach it.

criddell 2y ago
A useful keyboard shortcut is ctrl-end. You might have to hit it a couple of times, but it will get you to the bottom. I’m on Windows, but I’m guessing macOS and many Linux DEs have something similar.
- entropie 2y ago
  Yeah I know, besides my keyboard has no physcial end/home key. But if websites do stuff like this, I usually hit Ctrl+w because my time is to precious to fight bad UIs.

partdavid 2y ago

If you have a chance and are interested in the subject, I highly recommend the Musée Cinéma & Miniature in Lyon, France: <https://www.museeminiatureetcinema.fr/ https://www.museeminiatureetcinema.fr/>. A lot of the promotional material highlights the sets, costumes and props from films on display, and they are certainly interesting, but far more interesting to me are the two floors of cinematic miniatures--diorama after diorama of physically-built miniature sets used as "virtual backgrounds" before they were mostly generated using CGI art (which I do appreciate). They are remarkable and remarkably interesting as pieces of art as well as cinema history. This story reminded me of this--sometimes the effect you want needs a tactile realism that is hard to replicate digitally, and is rarely as neat and toy-like.

1-6 2y ago

This wallpaper is definitely less appealing without the story to go with it behind the scenes.

larodi 2y ago

So much for generative art in product design.

tdeck 2y ago

This reminds me of the famous photo from filming the Star Wars intro text: https://www.metaflix.com/behind-the-scenes-of-star-wars-opening-crawl/ https://www.metaflix.com/behind-the-scenes-of-star-wars-open...

dantondwa 2y ago

Note that the latest version of this wallpaper is CGI. [1] [1] https://mspoweruser.com/new-default-windows-10-light-theme-wallpaper-now-available-at-wallpaperhub-at-4k-resolution/ https://mspoweruser.com/new-default-windows-10-light-theme-w...

725686 2y ago

The very first thing I did when installing Windows 10 was changing the desktop image. It amazes me how many resources companies put into stuff that users don't give a peanut.

metaxy2 2y ago

I don't know if there's a name for this genre of photography (it's not exactly "abstract" since clearly things are being represented), but another example is the cover of Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News [0], which looks like a digital drawing or composite but was physically built and photographed by bandleader Isaac Brock. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_News_for_People_Who_Love_Bad_News#/media/File:MMGoodNews5075.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_News_for_People_Who_Love_...

JeremyNT 2y ago

Previous discussion on HN (2019): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21854161

geon 2y ago

I saw a photographer who mimicked the style of early 90s raytracing. Chrome spheres on checkerboards and such.

dhosek 2y ago

Reminds me of someone once asking me how I got the hand-drawn pencil look to the type on an article in the typography magazine I published about the T-26 type foundry. I drew it by hand with a pencil and scanned it. I had another article headline where I commissioned an artist to carve the headline in stone and had it photographed for the printer.

ErigmolCt 2y ago

It's remarkable to know the process behind this work of art truely

i2shar 2y ago

Brilliant! Just today, I was listening to a panel of world class artists being asked (now trite) questions on AI taking over their jobs and they concluded something like: "For mediocrity, turn to AI. If you want masters, call us".

kra34 2y ago

should somebody tell them about ML models?

JoeyBananas 2y ago

It was tacky and horrible from day 1.

classified 2y ago

Seeing that they put that much attention to detail into a wallpaper, it seems petty to get hung up on the fact that their software is a shit show. So it's all forgiven.

tmtvl 2y ago

When I was young we had a PC running Windows 3.1.1 (not the first computer I remember using, but the first one whose OS I remember the name of), and I recall it having this neat feature where you could draw an image in a tiny box and it would tile it across the screen as background image. It probably wouldn't work so well for a "4k" monitor, but I thought it neat at the time.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

_8j50 2y ago

It still doesn't measure up to xp's rolling hills or just about any macos default wallpaper. Nature is really pretty and hard to compete against. Small things like this say a lot about the overall product design philosophy in my opinion.

jononomo 2y ago

Wow, they must have spent $1 million to make that wallpaper but now you could do it in 15 seconds with ChatGPT.

resuresu 2y ago

[dead]

checkyoursudo 2y ago

> Our approach involved a live-action shoot using different variables and customizations. What does "live-action shoot" mean in this statement? Wouldn't this just be "still photography"? When I think of live action, I think of people or at least ... action?