Windows Vista

For pre-release wallpapers and pictures, see Windows Longhorn.

Windows Vista, codenamed Longhorn, is an operating system released by Microsoft in 2006. It is the successor to Windows XP. Although Vista brought on many changes from XP, it was poorly received due to its poor performance on computers of the time. However, its wallpapers were well received. The wallpaper set is the same across all editions, except Starter which has a unique wallpaper set. It would be followed by Windows 7 in 2009.

Wallpapers
Whereas Windows XP's wallpapers predominantly came from Corbis and Microsoft themselves, most of Vista's wallpapers are pictures from Getty Images which use a rights-managed license, with a few coming from Corbis, Microsoft employees, amateur photographer Hamad Darwish and one from professional freelancer Michael Haber. They are mostly at 1920x1440, while the widescreen ones are at 1920x1200, which would become the resolution of wallpapers in later Windows versions. It is worth noting that the widescreen wallpapers appear to have been cropped from their 1920x1440 counterparts, as opposed to recropping the original image.

Jenny Lam served as the creative director of Vista. During the selection process she analyzed around 50GB worth of low-resolution images. She brought in Flickr photographer Darwish and sent him on a commissioned photo shoot in Oregon, USA. Although he took around 6000 shots, only two of them made it on Vista. She also art-directed a professional photographer on a shoot in Santa Barbara and NYC, which is most likely Haber, however he only has one wallpaper in Vista. On top of that, she gave Microsoft employees an opportunity to submit their own images, while the Light Auras theme was created by Microsoft's own graphic designers.

Starter
Like with XP Starter Edition, Vista Starter has an entirely different set of wallpapers. However, whereas XP Starter Edition features a selection of regional wallpapers for each region, all regions of Vista Starter feature the same wallpaper set. Most of these were licensed from Getty Images, with a few coming from Corbis and one from SuperStock. With the exception of the widescreen wallpapers which are at 1600x1024, they are at 1024x768, as Starter was intended for low resolution netbooks in developing countries.

Sample pictures
Vista has fifteen sample pictures, compared to how XP only has four. Most of them were licensed from Getty Images and use a mixture of royalty free and rights-managed licenses. Like with Starter's wallpapers, they are at 1024x768. The metadata also provides descriptions of each photo and ratings. Dates are also included although most of them are likely inaccurate.

User account pictures
With the exceptions of guest and user, most of Vista's user account pictures come from Getty Images and use a mixture of royalty free and rights-managed licenses. They are at 128x128, compared to XP's 48x48.

Logon background
The logon background in all editions, with the exception of Starter, is a green-blue aurora with a line near the bottom of it. It was most likely created by Robert Stein and his team, who were responsible for the Light Aura wallpapers and other design elements of Vista. It is included at many different resolutions, including vertical ones.

Starter
The logon background in Windows Vista Starter simply consists of  color, which is also the case for Server 2008.

Setup background
Windows Vista is the first version of Windows with a fully graphical setup sequence, thus it features a background in BMP format named background_cli. It is located in. The background used in the window at the beginning of the setup sequence features a part of the logon background, except that the flare branding element is missing.

Service Pack 1 and 2
The setup background in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 features shared elements with the logon background; it is even possible that it is based on an early or alternate version of it. It appears to use part of said background, although two light beams on the left are slightly different and the flare branding element is missing, while the aurora has a more simplistic color scheme.