Oxygen Team Unveils Wallpaper Collection for KDE 4.0

The Oxygen team is happy to present the final selection of 15 wallpapers that will be released with KDE 4.0. It took longer than expected to manage the
contest due to the large number of entries (around 2000), but it was our first time organising such a contest. Read on for details of the winning entries.

The Oxygen team are overjoyed at the response and want to thank everyone who took part.
Every wallpaper will be available in several screen resolutions for both wide and regular display.
We believe the selection provides a beautiful, colorful, peaceful yet not distracting collection of free wallpapers. We're sure you'll find one you like.

All of these wallpapers are being released under the LGPL version 3 license. For more insights by the jury, check Riccardo's blog.

Code Poet's Dream

By Jim “code poet” and Nuno F. Pinheiro.

Colorado Farm

By Scott Ingram.

Curls On Green

By Joseph Connors.

Fields Of Peace

By Kenneth Wimer.

Fresh Morning

By Pablo León-Asuero Moreno.

Golden Ripples

By Joseph Connors.

Green Concentration

By Joseph Connors.

Ladybuggin'

By Rick Hanley.

Leaf's Labyrinth

By Riccardo Iaconelli.

Emotion

By Vlad Gerasimov.

EOS

By Vlad Gerasimov.

There's Rain On The Table

By Riccardo Iaconelli.

Red Leaf

By Joseph Connors.

Skeeter Hawk

By Tracy Sprader.

Summer

By Kenneth Wimer.

A big thanks for all the participants and congratulations to the winners by the Oxygen team.

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Comments

by Robin (not verified)

Well... if the artists aren't allowed to take part in this, we'd have less good wallpapers...

I don't think it was unfair... it just proves that the kde artists are very talented ;)

by nuno pinheiro (not verified)

Frist the one suposedly mine is not mine at all its realy from Jim (code poet).
Secondly wen we strated and it was originaly my idea IIRC, the iddea was to device a way to get some more wallpapers to had to the ones I had made, and Ken 2, ken is a kick ass photografer and we are lucky to have him.
In the end none of my wallpapers made the final cut :)
Ahs for riccardo he went in a taking pictures frenzy he worked like hell and honestly only in the end did I realized so many of his pictures made the final cut. I meen After watching 2000 pictures they all look abit the same.
You can beleve us that we tried our best to get the best pictures we could, im very soory for all the people that did not made the final cut, but we tried to be very honest.
Example on of the images that end up on the final 15 that is from ricardo is only there couse we got no anser from the outhor of the picture that did so we wre not sure we could lgpl it and has ricardo was the next runer up....

by André (not verified)

I don't think you guys need to defend yourself. If it were a serious contest with huge prizes to be won, people might have a point. As it is, you asked for contributions to select a set of stunning images to use as backgrounds. I think the artists community around KDE has every right to participate in that. In fact: I am very glad they do!

by Stalwart (not verified)

There's typo in links to VladStudio

by jasper (not verified)

into a screensaver slideshow!

by markrian (not verified)

The link to Green Concentration points to a broken image, as only the top half seems to have the image data.

Guys, these are beautiful images, by any standards. Fantastic work to authors and organisers alike!

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I finally tried running a full KDE 4 session just this last week. I just have to say that the Summer background (the default) is just fantastic and fits in well with the rest of the schema.

by Psychotron (not verified)

First of all, to get things straight, KDE 4 will have the best artwork, of any KDE so far! This is really great work! These pictures are overall pretty awesome! And I mean it, despite my comments below!! It's critics on a high level ;)

For the next contest I'd like to make some suggestions however to keep in mind:

- Out of those 15 pictures, 10 are nature shots and of those 7 are leaves, also only 2 are non photographic pictures. IMHO it would have been better to have a bit more diversion, thematically. Maybe another non photographic background in the style of EOS could still be added.

- I'm personally a bit bored of those overdone macro shots, like Red Leaf or Fresh Morning. I think it's sometimes a bit too much macro, bluring the background a bit too much, losing cohesion between the macro object and the background. It's as always, less is often more ;)

- Green Concentration is IMHO a bit too intensive for a default background picture, it's pretty blinding if have fullscreen...

by nuno pinheiro (not verified)

I agrea in most acounts, in the end its a mater of the quality of the abstract non photografic images we recived not being good enough, I should say so, I comited quite a few of those :)

Again this were the best one in our opinion.

by yman (not verified)

please, my it be "Colorado Farm Oil Paint". I always have problems with bright backgrounds making the icons less readable, and this one is dark. feels darker than just about all of them, in any case. it also looks stunning, which helps.

if it has to be abstract than I sure hope it's "Emotion", because I don't like "Eos" at all.

the rest of the wallpapers would be OK, I just think their nothing special.

by Sylvaticus (not verified)

Hello... just my 5 cents.. nice are all very nice.. but are not all too much similar???
I would have expected more etherogeneity of subjects...

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I agree, and it seems every image is either predominantly green or blue. Not only are the subjects of the images similar, but the colors.

by Boronk (not verified)

Sorry to say that, but most of this pictures make me headache. Too blurry, too unsharp. This abrupt switch from sharp to unsharp looks on ome of them very artificial.

I would not want such pictures on my screenbackground.

Sorry.

Boronk

by Garza (not verified)

lol unsharp?

by SK (not verified)

I agree. Plus they are very similar to each other. I would prefer a bit more diversity.

They are nice pictures generally speaking, but not so great for the screen background.

Cheers!

by Luis (not verified)

Hell, you obviously didn't try them.

Please Oxygen team, do not even bother whit those trolls.

by A Hater (not verified)

Yeah, your rite. All those pictures suck. I hate them all!

by feng shaun (not verified)

these are all amazing. Also the work of the top 100 artists should be posted later and available for download too. I mean the top 100 wallpapers!
O and the down part is that these things just add to the unrest to see the finished KDE4. I really can't wait anymore :( it's just so hard!

by Rudolhp (not verified)

miss some walls about konqui....and kde4, i like nature...but is kde4, the most expected DE, and not wallpaper about kd4 or konqui ???

by Grósz Dániel (not verified)

Nice pictures but I don't think they are good wallpapers - they contain too much contrast.

Let me qoute the openSUSE artwork guidelines ( http://en.opensuse.org/Artwork:Guidelines ):
"Wallpapers

The goal of the default wallpaper graphic is to be unobrtusive and allow the items on the desktop to be seen. It should not hinder the overview of user's desktop.

While a solid color background seems to be a perfect fit based on the goal above, the wallpaper also shouldn't be completely dull and boring.

It is very likely that a user will customize a wallpaper and even go against the outlined goal, putting a photo of his beloved one as the background. The default graphic however should only be some sort of abstract shape with low contrast of the texture. Abstract shapes work best for two reasons. First it doesn't make the human visual system focus on the background, but the items on top of it and also it avoids cultural or religious specifics. Using a picture of an animal might have such implications and in worst case scenario insult the user."

I agree with them and I don't think these pictures match them.

by MOP (not verified)

My thoughts exactly, well said.

by Paul Leopardi (not verified)

Now that the contest is over, I feel free to submit them to KDE Look. If all other contestants did the same, we would have 1900 new wallpapers.

by Henrik (not verified)

Will these wallpapers be available in dual-screen resolutions as welll?

by Felix (not verified)

Why ? You can set a wallpapers for each screen, which IMO looks better. My problem is that the slideshow screensaver of kde3 cannot handle the two screens of xinerama as two. So the slideshow is just unuseable and ugly.

Greetings
Felix

by parsek (not verified)

These are nice pictures but I was expecting wallpapers with KDE4 logo. None of them has it. They look like ordinary pictures not wallpapers.

by pete (not verified)

there is no need for a kde logo on the wallpaper

by pete (not verified)

not valdstudio lol

http://www.vladstudio.com