Hey y'all I was creating a background/wallpaper image and it struck me that I don't know what size to make it. The end result is meant to be a freebie that people can download so I need to make it a size or sizes that people can use and would expect to see for a wallpaper download.
I know a lot of you are into customization. What size do you choose when you are creating or downloading wallpaper?
I use HD and 4K Wallpaper.
In the past monitors used to be more squared-ish at a resolution of 4:3, whereas nowadays 16:9 is the widely de-facto standard. That's why sometimes you'll see old movies with the jarring black stripes on the sides.
With that in mind, I'd create the wallpaper following this aspect ratio at the highest possible resolution that you want to target. I'd say 4K is about what most people would use but you can go up to 8K or even 16K...
Why the highest possible? Because rescaling an image downwards will preserve the quality of the image. Going the opposite way will create distortion artifacts, even with AI magic. From there, you can use a simple script that will produce all the appropriate image sizes that you want to share it with:
for res in 2160 1080; do
convert original.png -scale x"$res" "downsized-$res.png"
done
I haven't tested this but should be something like that. Or you can use something like GIMP as well. A bit more manual but it'll work all the same.
EDIT:
Something like this should work:
#!/bin/bash
resolutions=(2160 1080)
wallpaper_original=$1
for res in "${resolutions[@]}"; do
ext=${wallpaper_original//*.}
convert "$wallpaper_original" -scale "x${res}" "${wallpaper_original%%.*}-${res}.${ext}"
done
And run this script like:
./downscale.sh /path/to/custom_wallpaper.png
This will produce custom_wallpaper-2160.png and custom_wallpaper-1080.png. Adjust the target resolutions as needed.
Wow thanks a lot! I'm still designing my images then I can put your script to work!
Good luck! Remember that you don't need to create wallpaper for every single resolution there is. I would only make versions for the most popular ones like 1080, 4K and maybe 8K, since screens with lower resolutions could still use them and the system would automatically know to fit them to the available screen space.
The most important thing is the aspect ratio, which might be important if you want to make the wallpaper available also on smartphones since the resolution might be different due to the portrait orientation.
I just make the AI do the job scaling and enhancing pictures.
The great thing about making a Wallpaper, is it can always be downsized, to make multiple choices later. So, the idea is, make your wallpaper 16K.
Then upload a 16K, 8K, 4K, 1440P, and 1080P, to whatever source you will be hosting them, for both yourself and other's.
I think you already know by now, that you can make your Wallpaper in Gimp. You just get cooler by the minute, no doubt there. 
I wouldn't know the first thing about that, I'm behind the times!
I might give Gimp a go. I'm all thumbs in Gimp though heh. I fly like an eagle in Inkscape!
This may be a good excuse to learn more about it 
I'm not sure I would want to spend the money on that sort of thing just to scale a few freebie wallpapers though. If I planned on making mass volumes of them it, the expense would make more sense if it saved me a lot of time.
EDIT: Or did you mean Gimp?
Both, really. Any excuse to learn new things is always welcomed! Of course, don't spend money on it if you don't have to. If you can find something free then go for it! Otherwise, learning how to do it yourself is also good.
When I first started creating walls for various distros I was advised to go 800 x 600 so that those with small screens are covered and users of larger screens can stretch/scale. Alternatively, create one and just modify the parameters of scale using GIMP's Scaling tool:
I start with a large image.
Scaling a small image up creates ugly artifacts and blur.
You won't believe this, I literally did get Upscayl, and have been playing around with it. I love it, it's amazing, loved the tutorial intro and update notes too!
Yep agreed x 1000! I work with vectors though because I can't draw so scaling isn't usually too much of a problem depending on what I have going on.
I work with Vectors as well, I rarely fire up Gimp. Inkscape all the way.
All my icon themes are made that way.
Is this how you created my lovely ILP wallpaper? What an awesome app then! That wallpaper, and the icons you made, are close to my heart. After all these years, I still run them. And I only ran that holiday wallpaper from the Zorin team, until January, then I switched back to my pony poster.
Sadly, I only made the icons. The wallpaper is done by someone else.
