I got bored of looking at the standard Windows and Mac desktop wallpaper, so I decided to re-purpose some of the photographs I have taken on my travels. I have created standard and widescreen versions. They should be high enough resolution even for most developers’ monitors. Happy Christmas.
Licensing
You can freely use these images as wallpaper on your computer. However they may not be modified, used for any other purpose or distributed (except via http://www.successfulsoftware.net) without my explicit written permission. I retain the copyright and all other rights to these images.
Instructions
Left click on a thumbnail of the appropriate size/aspect-ratio for your monitor.
Right click on the full-size image and select:
- FireFox: Set as desktop background
- Internet Explorer: Set as background
- Safari: Use image as desktop picture
1920 x 1200 wallpaper
These images are suitable for wide screen monitors (aspect ratio 8:5) including:
- 1920 x 1200
- 1680 x 1050
- 1440 x 900
- 1280 x 800
 Stirling Falls, New Zealand. |
 Window reflection. |
 Peak 43, Nepal. |
 Palm, Queensland, Australia. |
 Lenticular clouds near Mount Sefton, New Zealand. |
 Kalahari sand at sunset, Namibia. |
 Heron Island, Queensland, Australia. |
 Waves, Hawaii. |
 A MiG-29 Fulcrum performing the 'cobra' manoeuvre. |
 Dead Vlei, Namibia. |
 Dead Vlei, Namibia. |
 Boyd Falls, New Zealand. |
 Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia. |
 Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia. |
 Aquarium, Plymouth, UK. |
1600 x 1200 wallpaper
These images are suitable for standard monitors (aspect ratio 4:3) including:
- 1600 x 1200
- 1152 x 864
- 1024 x 768
- 800 x 600
 Stirling Falls, New Zealand. |
 Window reflection. |
 Peak 43, Nepal. |
 Palm, Queensland, Australia. |
 Lenticular clouds near Mount Sefton, New Zealand. |
 Kalahari sand at sunset, Namibia |
 An MiG-29 Fulcrum performing the 'cobra' manoeuvre. |
 Boyd Falls, New Zealand. |
 Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia. |
 Aquarium, Plymouth, UK. |
Notes
Creating wallpaper wasn’t as easy as I thought (nothing ever is). You need images that are in landscape format, are not too saturated, contrasty or busy and are cropped and resized to exactly the right width and height. Thankfully I had some tools to help – I used PicCrop to do the cropping, BatchPhoto for batch creation of the thumbnail images, Xplorer2 for batch file renaming and Photoshop Elements for everything else. Some of the images are only available in wide screen format as they didn’t work as well in a 4:3 format.
All the photographs were taken by me with a Minolta Dynax 7D digital camera or scanned from slides taken by me with a Minolta Dynax 700si. Goodbye Minolta cameras, I miss you.
Successful Software 
Great shots, Andy! However, the copyright notice is fairly large and not so pretty.
>the copyright notice is fairly large and not so pretty
Yes, I’m not sure I got that right. I haven’t got the time or patience to re-do them all though.
I like the photographs, though the copyright notice and the JPEG artefacts are ugly. I especially don’t think I could stare at JPEG artefacts all day without getting annoyed and choosing something else instead.
>the JPEG artefacts are ugly
On which images? I used some compression to make the images a sensible size, but I didn’t notice any artefacts.
View the 1920×1200 image of Peak 43 at 1:1. The sky appears to be made of thousands of blocks of similar blue and the peak has an aura of crystal.
Perhaps it’s not so visible on different screens. I’m looking on a Macbook 13″ aluminium.
This may be partly due to it being scanned from a 35mm slide.
Really nice pictures, but the Peak 43 one does seem to be quite badly compressed compared to the others.
Great photos, Andy.
Did you know that Sony basically bought out Minolta, and most of the folks involved in the Minolta designs stayed on with Sony, so even though you mourn the demise of the brand, Sony cameras are pretty much Minolta under a new name. I believe the Sony alpha-range of cameras are even compatible with Minolta lenses.
(I’m a DSLR newbie and have a Sony a-200K that I’m very happy with)
I realise the internals of the Sony Alpha is based on the Minolta and the lenses are compatible. But the Alphas I saw had cheap plasticky bodies and fiddly little controls. I much prefer the solid 7D with its chunky controls. I’ll probably be switching to Canon or Nikon at some point. Let me know if you are interested in a set of Minolta/Alpha compatible lenses.
I have to admit I’ve never used the 7D – I was a long-time Canon user, but couldn’t stomach the stupid prices of going digital until recently.
I hope you can find a new camera you enjoy as much as the 7D, and if you are looking to get rid of your old glass, please put me on the list of interested parties :)
That is not an Su-27. It is a MiG-29. But you got the “Fulcrum” part right, which is a name the US and it’s allies nicknamed it.
Brad,
I think I was conflating 2 shows, one where I saw an Su-27 ‘flanker’ and another where I saw a MiG-29 ‘fulcrum’. I have now corrected the text. Thanks.