Free Large Background Desktop Vertical Wallpaper for (Portrait) Monitors

I'm adding new extra-large free wallpapers each month, so be sure to check back!



Recent addition: free vertical extra-large wallpapers that work in both portrait OR landscape mode when rotated, both abstracts and nature images. Most of these can stand having the "ends" cropped if you want to resize them to a ratio other than 16:10 wide screen. If you like these, link to this page so others can find it too!



You might ask: who else uses their monitors in portrait mode? Here's a couple of photos from the Googleplex to give you an idea:



I use a 24" flat panel widescreen (16:10) monitor set to 1920 x 1200 in portrait (vertical) mode. I've tweaked or montaged a number of free images into vertical 16:10 desktop wallpapers in Photoshop. For example, the first image, Eagle Mountain Mist, is a montage of six images, and lots of Photoshop "mist" (you can also see it on Flickr). Some have been rotated to work well vertically. If these are too huge for you, realize Windows can auto-size them for a desktop background. (Here's a great site for completely free images.)

Montages and optimized free images:

Note: These are vertical as shown.

Best of Hubble and the night sky

Note: These are vertical as shown (regardless of original image)

Free Nature Desktop Images: Vertical or Horizontal

Note: these come in a horizontal orientation.

Rotate to vertical as desired in an image program

Free Abstract Wallpaper: Vertical or Horizontal

Note: these come in a horizontal orientation.

Rotate to vertical as desired in an image program

Finding other sources for widescreen vertical wallpapers



Probably the best is interface lift, but Stock Exchange has quite a few to pick through. And there's a big list of links here. Try this useful large image search for popular, large nature wallpapers easily cropped. I can't post any here since they prohibit redistribution.



Graffiti Wallpaper is also excellent. Some of the nature images shown here are simply rotated from Mike Swanson's excellent collection.



If you've ever thought of making 1920 x 1200 wallpapers for your widescreen monitor from online map images, check out Earth Wallpapers.

Sources

Here are the source of some of the montaged and optimized images, in order from first appearing above:

• Eagle Mountain Mist is a montage of several images and lots of photoshopping;
  
  
• Lazy Days II by boss019; April 24th, 2007;
• Neutron Revolver by Parth; November 18th, 2006;
• Peace by Grant Erb; December 15th, 2005--Morfee Lake, Mackenzie, British Columbia, Canada;
  
  
• Silence by shiftedreality; May 13th, 2007;
• Epic Falls by Chris Fenison; June 15th, 2006;
• Splash/3D rendered water by Ratow; January 15th, 2006;
• Crepuscule, by Fabien Egot; August 16th, 2007;
• Courage et dévouement (Courage and dedication) Cédric Sacilotto's photo taken with a Canon EOS 400D at f9, 1/200 s; France, copyright 2007;
• Solar Wind effect on Earth's magnetic field: Scaling The Universe;
• Modified from Haleakala Sunrise by Greg Martin;
  
  
• If anyone can help me with the original source of the starry night over golden building (MIT) HDR image, I'd be grateful;
• The rest are adaptations of classic Hubble Space Telescope photos from a variety of sources.

Photoshop optimization techniques include HIROLAM, LAB color adjustments, BlendIF layer styles to reduce white halos after sharpening, etc.