new aqua backgrounds

June 10th, 2006


I’ve always liked the abstract desktop backgrounds that have come with Mac OS X — I find photo desktop backgrounds distracting — but the choice of just bright Aqua Blue or muted Aqua Graphite is a little stingy. For the sake of variety, I’ve fired up Photoshop and made myself a couple different highly fashionable Aqua backgrounds based on the original “Aqua Blue” desktop in Mac OS X 10.4:

  • Aqua Turquoise, a darker greenish tint (my favorite). Looks great with Aluminum PowerBooks/MacBookPros.
  • Aqua Fresh, a variant of Aqua Turquoise, bright like toothpaste.
  • Aqua Ubuntu Orange, a orange/brown desktop tinted to match the “Human” theme introduced in Ubuntu 6.06 “Dapper Drake”.
  • Aqua Lime, a bright green desktop which should look adorable on the white iBooks/MacBooks.
  • Aqua Negative, a dark desktop that should look pretty cool on the new black MacBooks.

~jeff



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  • http://www.holistic-technology.com Dan Ridley

    Went a little heavy on the JPEG compression, don’t you think? I like the Ubuntu and Negative looks quite a bit, but they have way too many artifacts to actually put on the desktop.

  • http://ldopa.net Jeff

    Try sitting back from your monitor a couple feet.

    No, you may have a point. I didn’t see it as an issue when I was saving them, but now, all I see are the colors banding. Sadly, I am far too lazy to fix.

  • http://www.holistic-technology.com Dan Ridley

    Well, I’m running 1280×800 here, so the first look was kinda zoomed in on the corners of the image. If I resize it down with a Lanczos filter, the artificts blend out well enough.

    Try sitting back from your monitor a couple feet.

    Ha!

  • http://www.marcelomontesdeoca.com Marcelo Montes Deoca

    hey jeff, i love your aquanegative background, i know photoshop too but i havent quite figure out how to recreate it, so i wanted to know if it is okay if i use your backgrounds on my website, which of course is not comercial, i just got my domain http://www.marcelomontesdeoca.com, and it’s where i plan to create my portfolio, i major web site development…

    Thanks a lot, if not, can you give me any tips on how to do it myself?

    thanks. Marcelo.

  • http://www.marcelomontesdeoca.com Marcelo Montes Deoca

    sorry i forgot, in case you dont mind me using your backgrounds, is it possible that you send me a bigger resolution one, maybe a psd?, of course if you want, I would make sure your name appears on it.

    thanks again, Marcelo.

  • http://www.betterwallpapers.com Chandra

    super! i’ve made my own blog