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Strange Windows wallpaper trick

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Edvard:
Try this, it's nutty...

Open your Paint program.
Select Image->Attributes and make your image 2 pixels by 2 pixels.
Select View->Zoom->Custom->800%
Now put black in the lower-left corner, dark gray in the lower-right corner, and light grey in the upper-left.
Like so...



Save it somewhere convenient, then in your display properties, select the bitmap you just made, select 'Center' and  Stretch Desktop Wallpaper enabled.

Lovely isn't it?


This works with all kinds of bitmaps, look at this one...



and what it does...

jgpaiva:
Hey, good tip!
I like it a lot! :D ;D

Edvard:
The best part is you get nifty gradation wallpapers that clock in at < 100 bytes (not a typo!)  :-*

f0dder:
What shell are you using, Edvard?

Cute trick, I wonder if all Windows versions does this kind of interpolation when stretchblt'ing :)

Edvard:
My desktop as pictured is a PowerPro bar at the bottom, JSPager virtual desktop thingummy at the top and I have my taskbar and icons hidden.
Also it's NT4.0 SP6a. (surprise!) so other versions should do as well...

I've found that you get the best effects the less pixels you use (a 1x2 bitmap gets you a nice horizontal gradation), and it's quite a mental exercise to predict the effect you'll get with such a minimal configuration.
I must admit, I have a soft spot for gradated wallpapers and have used a nice little app called "bsetroot" that does all kinds of nice gradation effects (get it here) as well as Amok's GradientDesk (search google, it's floating around...) which is where I got the inspiration for this idea.
I opened one of the GradientDesk-created wallpapers in XnView by accident and was shocked to see a just a 1-pixel line that faded from one color to the other.

I wonder if this could start a trend of people trading 2 and 4 pixel wallpapers with whimsical names.
Here's 'Purple Dawn'
purple dawn.bmp (0.07 kB. 2x2 - viewed 1034 times.)
and 'Hazy Inspiration'
hazy inspiration.bmp (0.09 kB. 3x3 - viewed 945 times.)

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