Ask Lemmy

urban photography which i heavily edited

Currently I have mine themed to vault-tec branding, but I'm not a big fan of blue so it will probably change soon.

I use green.

Some relevant comms

• !wallpapers@lemmy.ca
• !wallpapers@lemmy.world
• !ultrawide_wallpapers@lemmy.world
• !wallpapers@sh.itjust.works
• !animewallpapers@ani.social

TLDR: if you're a VRChat player/enjoyer, Find a cool world in VRChat to pose in with your favorite avatar by yourself or with friends and take a picture with the in-game camera.

Alternatively, "Elite Dangerous" is a great desktop background generator! Find a cool spot and take a screenshot. Boom. New desktop background haha.

/end TLDR

I play alot of VRChat and I found a cool world in VRChat called " VR art 'New place' ". It's basically a VR art museum where you click on the "painting" and it teleports you inside of it. The scenery in the world is super super pretty and very cool; I highly recommend it.

What I did is I found a spot that I thought would look good for a desktop background. I posed on a dock facing a giant moon. And then used VRChat's fly camera to give some distance. Thus making my avatar appear small in the center and expanding the view of the art in the world. That way the focus is moreso on the world with my small avatar in the center.

It's kind of like placing yourself in the middle of your favorite desktop background. Granted I suppose any experienced photoshopper or photographer could do something similar haha.

As for Elite Dangerous, I've enjoyed flying my ship to a cool star system and then using the spectator camera to take pictures of cool phenomena and use those as desktop background too. Some of my favorites include: landing on Ring planets, finding a tiny planet with a view of 3 or more stars, or pictures of black holes.

Haven't set up my kde desktop yet, so default from install for now. My "other" os uses a totally black background (how often do I see any part of my de? only for a few seconds, before that the os had a folder of images downloaded from nasa of stars and other galactic images

Anyone know if there's something easy to use like Wallpaper Engine for Linux? Specifically on Bazzite

at work, on my main desktop, I use a picture I took on vacation (of Scotland)

otherwise I have to use a lot of servers so I color code the desktops to remind myself of what systems it is or how critical it is. Using red or uncomfortable colors on systems that are critical keeps me from making mistakes on them.

At home on my laptop, I have been using the KDE OneStandsOut wallpaper for a few years https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace-wallpapers/-/blob/master/OneStandsOut/contents/screenshot.jpg?ref_type=heads

its simple and nice to look at for a few seconds when I am actually looking at the desktop loading after a reboot or something

I use two different pieces of art I made myself for my mobile and desktop devices respectively!

I don't keep icons on my desktop, so contrast isn't something I worry about, and I'm a sucker for colors :3

Custom. I have a folder of wallpapers I've been accumulating over the past thirty years, since I got my first laptop (brick of a thing, too) on my way to college. There are photos, parks from comics, MS Paint drawings, diagrams, even screenshots of previous desktop setups.

my background is an edit of that one prince meme where it says "You can always discuss your wages, it's always legally correct" after my boss told us not to discuss our wages in a meeting. I raised hell in the group chat until I got her to admit, in text, that she legally cannot stop us.

I historically have looked for pictures that have a lot of visual depth, like a cityscape or a vista or the ocean or landscape something. It needs to be pleasant to look at and complex but not too busy. I also like there to be a range of emotions that I can feel from it, so that I'm not locked into anything depressing. Generally, the only times I see my wallpaper are when I'm overwhelmed and minimize/close everything, I'm looking for a reset, or on a phonecall and I'm thinking without doing anything else simultaneously.

An added bonus is symmetry, either a vertical line or horizontal, or multiple. Even more bonus is if it's natural AND aligned with the orientation (the picture not just being taken askew of a thing that is symmetrical). So that I can drag the selector with my mouse and make shapes. I know I'm not the only person that does this.

Oh also, brought sunlight and cool colors I find better. Nothing dark and broody or monotone, as those get old super fast. Imperial Boy (an artist) is close, but often either not detailed enough, or too gut wrenchingly melancholy for my sanity, or even not deep enough. Like imagine looking at a picture of a campfire vs being able to stare at an actual campfire. One of those is significantly more pensive.

I'll stick with these for years until I have a need to change, like from a serious life event.

Reading the other comments is wild. Everybody's so interesting and different. The people who are like, "i like this very specific shade of grey" i can't help but let my imagination run. You're either military or like a million of the same exact grey outfits with the same daily routine and the Up! music is playing.

I always use images from the JWST:

https://esawebb.org/images/?sort=-release_date

They're all gorgeous.

For my phone backgrounds, I use pictures made by Seok98.

GiTS/Jujutsu Kaisen anime girls.

*I'm so surprised how many people use solid colours. Interesting to see other peoples apparent mindset in that regard.

*Should also say I don't use desktop icons like a dirty pleb >:3 i use ubuntu btw (and idrc if you use icons)

every system is different. landscapes, textures, shots from tv or movies, people.... only one is using 'defaults', the wp from the 'sunrise' win11 theme (was set to that for some screen caps and recording, to avoid any.. uh.. 'issues'.. over having copyrighted imagery in them--it was a still from one of the lego movies). my phone is anna and elsa and will always be anna and elsa. dunno why. it just is.

I use #222e45. I think that it's been constant since the 1990s or so.

 $ convert -size 200x200 "xc:#222e45" example.png

I don't see it much these days, since I'm using sway, which does tiling window management. There's almost always something fully covering it now.

I use Wallpaper Engine for animated and interactive wallpapers. They're fucking awesome!

Solid black to save my OLED screen from burn in.

As pixel density has improved, I’ve gravitated toward highly detailed cityscapes. Like photos of Manhattan or Singapore or Tokyo (as examples). They just look so cool with tiny pixels.

I prefer to use a photo I took and then build the rest of the desktop theme around it. Then again you end up looking at the desktop very little so it doesn't matter too much.

I have an anime girl wallpaper with a pink reddish theme

I like black wallpaper. I like to keep the serial number of the machine visible. the wallpaper is black with the serial number.

my phone lock screen includes my imeis, mac address, bluetooth mac, model, and serial no

I'm just quirky like that

I have a script that pulls a fresh image from NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day and sets it as a wallpaper. But I rarely see it because 99.9% of the time my windows are maximized and I don't have things on the desktop.

Poorly cropped (by me) manga screencaps mostly. Some silly pictures and landscapes here and there too

I have a folder with 598 pictures of stealth aircraft that are cycled through as wallpaper and screen saver.

It varies, right now I've got outdoor photos I took on my work computer and phone, and a game screenshot on my home computer.

I found a bunch of 4k dark wallpapers and rotate them out occasionally with a script I wrote.

I use a custom wallpaper. It’s a screenshot of Miller from The Expanse because he is my favorite character. My screensaver images are also from The Expanse.

At work, all black, because I prefer working in a darkened room and sometimes I need to use the laptop in sunny conditions full of glare. I have no need of any extra light getting blasted at me not directly related to something I'm working on. Also, I get a kick out of the "Why are your other monitors off?" comments. Also, IT tends to clutter my desktop with a bunch of shortcuts with a hodgepodge of icon styles, it's a lot easier to visually parse these on a black field.

At home, the media server is directly connected to a TV with HDMI and has a desktop environment. My distributions default wallpapers always come in two varieties, colorful or greyscale. The server automatically logs into a restricted user account for family access to Kodi, retro arch, web browsing, etc., which has the colorful wallpaper. If for some reason I need to get into the admin account with a GUI, the desktop wallpaper is grey. It's like an always-on simplified color coded whoami. Since I almost never interact with this machine except through ssh or the services it hosts, this is the most amount of ricing I'm willing to do.

Solid color: Light-ish dull-ish green. Been using it since I concluded that I didn't like the Win98 default, and it has carried over to other OSes after that.

Roughly #81e39b

I have a photo of the outdoors somewhere. I change jt everybfew months to keep up with the season