When it comes to decorating your desktop with new wallpaper, you probably have some favorite sources already, and we hopefully our Wallpaper Wednesday series
is one of them. Even so, there's always room for more great photos and
images to download and use to personalize your workstation. Here are a
few great wallpaper repositories you may never have heard of that are
worth exploring.
The Desktop Wallpaper Project
The
Desktop Wallpaper Project is actually much like our own Wallpaper
Wednesdays, and appears every Wednesday over at art and design blog, The Fox Is Black.
Every week the team behind the site highlight the work of a designer or
artist who's made a beautiful, original image available to the public
to download and use on their desktop computer, mobile phone, wherever
they choose. In almost every case, the work is available in multiple
resolutions, from the netbook-friendly 1280×800 all the way up to
2560×1440. They also include specific downloads for the iPhone, iPhone
5, and iPad, but they're all easily tweaked to fit Android and other
mobile devices as well. If you're tired of landscape photographs and
swirling colors and would like some original art, check them out.
Dual Monitor Backgrounds
If
you're like me, you can't imagine working without at least two
displays. If you do have multiple monitors, you may be settling for one
image on one screen and nothing on the other, or two completely
different desktops on both. Thanks to Dual Monitor Backgrounds (DMB),
you don't have to. DMB hosts thousands of free desktops in resolutions
designed specifically for dual screens of all sizes. Sometimes it's two
objects on either display, juxtaposed to create a mirror or versus
effect, other times is a single sweeping image that combines both of
your monitors into a single view. The site is updated every day, and you
can browse by popular, recently uploaded, or by category. If you create
an account, you can save your preferred resolutions, rate and comment
on wallpapers, and save your favorites.
Social Wallpapering
Social Wallpapering is actually pretty big, but I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who aren't familiar with it. The site thrives on its community of users, who up and down-vote wallpapers they love or dislike in order to keep the front page fresh, interesting, and the site as a whole only populated with much-loved, high-quality wallpapers. At the same time, because of that, good wallpapers can go unnoticed because someone just hates a specific category, for example. Of course, you can always fight fire with fire, sign up for a free account, and up-vote the wallpapers you love. You can also save them to your account so you can get back to them later, heart them so everyone knows you love them, and, of course, download them to your computer so you can add them to your rotation. Social Wallpapering is more of a "you get what you get" kind of site, so don't expect tons of screen resolutions and options. You do, however, get a collection of wallpapers you may not find anywhere else.
Desktop Nexus
Desktop Nexus has well over a million wallpapers to its credit, over 700,000 members, and yet it's still one of those wallpaper sites that you don't hear about too frequently. Maybe it's because it has that kind of "ad-ridden wallpaper site" look to it, but looks can be deceiving, and especially are in this case. Desktop Nexus has a massive community of users, moderators, and artists, all sharing their own wallpapers and wallpapers they find elsewhere around the web. You get the typical categories, like "nature" and "video games," but the site's groups and sub-groups are as niche as "wallpapers of waterfalls" and "HDR wallpapers." If there's something specific that you find inspiring or want on your desktop, you can probably find a member group dedicated to it. Accounts are free (as are the wallpapers), and once you're a member you can upload your own favorites, join those groups, rate wallpapers you find, save your favorites, and customize your experience. As with most sites like this, once you're signed up, you also see fewer ads than passers-by.
GoodFon
GoodFon is a bit smaller than many of the other sites here, but it still has a modest collection of wallpapers in a variety of categories, so it's not difficult to find something you'd like (and might not find elsewhere). The site has the usual categories, like "people" and "sports," but check out their "macro" and "painting" categories for images you may not be expecting, and to find something really unique. One of GoodFon's claims to fame is that all of its wallpapers are available in various screen resolutions and checked by site administrators to make sure they're high-quality and fit the category they're listed in. If you sign up for an account, you can rate wallpapers, save them to your account, search by color, and more. Also, don't be put off by the russian characters on some of the pages—the site's community is very global.
PixelGirl Presents
PixelGirl Presents has been around for a good long while (it was founded in 2000 by one person), and its collection has only grown and matured over the years. While there are plenty of desktop wallpapers to browse, you can also find tons of smartphone wallpapers and icon sets to personalize your desktop. Wallpapers and images are listed with their artist alongside so you can see more by the same person, and there are quick filter buttons at the top of each page to sort by screen resolution or category. Unlike sites that aim to have massive, sprawling desktop collections, PixelGirl Presents is pretty well curated. Whether her style is the same as your style is a matter of debate, but you'll definitely find a nice variety of images that you probably won't find elsewhere.
Bonus: Flickr and 500px Groups
While we love finding sites that are dedicated to wallpapers and that offer them in dozens of sizes, if you prefer to avoid flashy graphics and screenshots from video games, check out Flickr and 500px. Neither site is exactly "under the radar," but both have great user groups and user-generated collections of photography and art that make great desktop wallpapers, and almost all of them have RSS feeds that you can plug in to your favorite desktop switching application (more on that a little later). Most people think of Flickr and 500px as places to upload their own photos and to connect with people they know, but you can find a wealth of great wallpaper, much of it free to download directly from the photographer, as well.
The Usual Suspects
If you're just getting into the whole wallpaper thing, check out our guide to keeping your desktop fresh with new wallpapers.
We show you some great apps and tools to automatically download and
rotate your desktop wallpaper from a number of sources—or your own
personal collection.
Of course, we would be remiss to let this post go without mentioning some of our own favorite wallpaper sites, like Desktoppr, which syncs with Dropbox for easy downloading and desktop switching, and Wallbase,
which scrapes a number of sites on the internet for a constant stream
of new, high-quality wallpapers that you can search by keyword, color,
resolution, and even by uploading your own image (which is great if you
have a low-resolution desktop and want to find a higher-res version!)
We should also mention the obvious names, like InterfaceLift, Wallpapers Wide, DeviantArt, Vlad Studio, Digital Blasphemy, NASA's Image Gallery, and some of the more popular wallpaper sites that made our top five in our last Hive Five for wallpaper sites, and the Hive before that.
If you're looking for even more sources, check those out, you won't be
disappointed (and you may already have them bookmarked).
