I’ve been using Harmony Dark as wallpaper for a bit, and I love it.
However, I’d like to add that the fixed time on the alarm clock is slightly confusing. Obviously it won’t match the clock widget, while also being much more prominent when the background is visible. I wonder if it would be better to remove the digits (or replace the clock by something else) although obviously that takes away from the time-of-day association that the original design wants to convey.
I’m a little disappointed to see the jury go so heavy on purely abstract designs, 3 out of 6. All of those are very well done, but Flow and Stairway in particular are very “traditional” in the sense that they don’t introduce a new kind of style and could just as well be a Windows or macOS wallpaper from anytime in the last 5-10 years. That’s also a compliment of course, but I feel like Plasma should aim for a little more “character”.
Waves, for an ostensibly abstract wallpaper, is a little more out there in terms of colours, lines and massing. While still retaining what makes a good wallpaper. It’s a great mix, I like it a lot. Also it has large stretches of dark which will make it work very well with icons & text underneath (for people who like cluttering their desktops).
Sun/Comet is definitely gorgeous. Different and very well done. I wouldn’t mind this at all for a default wallpaper.
Hexworld is not my favourite. Whilst clearly a continuation of Plasma 5 blocky landscapes, it’s simultaneously too busy and not exciting enough. In addition to the bokeh suggestions from the OP, I also feel like the water could benefit from not being a single uniform shade of blue. Just a bit of gradient, or perhaps a handful of waves? But I’m not convinced that the busy contrasty composition of the hills is quite fixable without essentially coming up with a new design altogether. All of the versions in the original thread are like that, it’s what you get with many distinct blocks each throwing a hard blocky shadow onto the next.
Overall, I would have made some slightly different choices for the set of finalists, but as you say, there are so many great ones and picking just six is super hard. Good job everyone. Also the many excellent wallpapers that somehow didn’t make it into the finals.
Can we add an ad-hoc new category for an OLED-friendly wallpaper, to also be shipped in the upstream Plasma set? Something that helps with minimizing burn-in, by and avoiding sharp contrasts / hard line transitions and mainly sticking to darker tones even for the day-time image. Extra points for a color palette that exercises subpixels more evenly and makes use of OLED’s wide color gamut as opposed to just sticking to pure blue.
I feel there aren’t a lot of wallpapers in Plasma’s current set that fulfill these criteria. Yes, manufacturers are getting better at extending OLED lifetimes with forced pixel refresh cycles, offsetting pixels by a few during regular operation, developing more efficient subpixels that don’t have to be cranked up to the limit for simply just regular desktop use. But nothing beats not straining the display in the first place.
With OLED becoming more prevalent in laptops, OLED monitors being the current recommendation for pure gaming (although those will still use a desktop from time to time), 4K TVs increasingly getting used as PC monitors, and last but not least the new Steam Deck OLED, I think KDE would do well to designate a wallpaper for OLED users in particular. Not limited to OLED users of course, but tailored towards them with a message that says “we care about you” and “KDE is (also) for gamers”.
This would go nicely together with all the auto-hide improvements that Niccolò et al. made for the Plasma 6 panel.
I want to congratulate all of the finalists and wish them all the best of luck. I’m totally rooting for Harmony I think it would be a nice addition to the KDE wallpaper collection.
IIRC there was some discussion in the original submission thread about integrating a widget into it. Would that be feasible to ship? Alternatively, are there other solutions for integrating a functional clock into the background?
Given that Plasma 6.0 is past feature freeze, I’m not particularly positive on a new feature to automatically integrate a clock at a particular position for a specific wallpaper. Maybe someone else has more imagination about how to pull it off though.
It wouldn’t be possible with just an image wallpaper. It also wouldn’t be easy otherwise. I think the best thing to do would be to blank the clock screen, or if that creates too much negative space, to remove it altogether - which would be my suggestion.
Of course, this makes me wonder how awesome it would be to combine Harmony’s excellent design with @David_Edmundson’s classic FlipClock wallpaper plugin, time automatically positioned at the right location.
It’s primarily about the lack of difference in line widths throughout the picture, really. Consider which elements should be more prominent by having thicker outlines or have lines taper off. Just in general, have some line thickness variation.
Also, apologies for responding quite late to this! Wasn’t really sure about outing myself as a judge and clarifying some of the feedback, until the others assured me that it’s ok.
Hello, dear man! I understand about the clock, but if this is considered in conjunction with the clock widget, and so the painted clock does not interfere with the illustration, but you can mute the numbers themselves so that they do not take away attention. If I were a developer, I would definitely make a widget for my wallpaper, but unfortunately I don’t have these skills and it’s sad (( I’m thinking about an alternative variation where there won’t be a clock, but for now I’m trying to put everything in order that I already have at the moment. I just don’t have enough time for everything ((( And thank you again for everything!
Hello, dear man! I’m thinking about the contours, but so far I’ve only found one part that I can highlight this way. I’ll send the illustrations here tomorrow with all sorts of corrections. All the best guys!
I like your work the most. It looks very nice and interesting, I get a nice vibe looking at this background. I agree with the comments above about the watch, but personally it doesn’t bother me. I love the KDE references and Easter eggs in your work.
