Longhorn

This page is under construction. Longhorn is the codename for Windows Vista. Originally conceived in 2001, its development was reset in 2004; around 2 years later it would be released as Vista. The codename would also be used for Server 2008. This page lists wallpapers from both before and after Longhorn was renamed, for the sake of convenience, but does not list wallpapers in the final release. Note that this wiki will refer to Longhorn as the codename alone rather than "Windows Longhorn", due to that phrasing not being used by Microsoft.

Wallpapers
Wallpapers left over from XP are not listed here.

Pre-reset
During late 2002 and early-mid 2003 the default wallpapers were auroras created by Microsoft's own designers, including Robert Stein. From late 2003 onward they would license rights managed images from Getty Images. All of these wallpapers share the same filename, Bliss.bmp, however this wiki will refer to them just as default wallpapers to avoid confusion. Jenny Lam was involved in the wallpaper selection process, like with post-reset Longhorn/Vista. The other wallpapers remained the same as XP's throughout this phase of Longhorn's development.

UI demos
As a result of Longhorn's ambitiousness, Microsoft produced a large amount of Macromedia Director demos to show off their ideas for Longhorn. Each of these had their own unique wallpapers, with a few of them being recycled from previous versions of Windows such as Windows 2000 and XP.

This list is incomplete, as there are UI demos that have not yet saw the light of the day, plus many wallpapers are covered by UI elements making them very difficult to reverse search. Also, please note that some of these wallpapers may not even be official at all. In some cases, there is no way to know for sure; however they will be listed here until proven they are fake.

Post-reset
Please note that this article also includes wallpapers that were added after Longhorn was renamed to Vista.

Builds 5001 to 5231
During this point in development, all of the wallpapers were identical to XP's except the default wallpapers and later the branding wallpaper.

Builds 5252 to 5342
By build 5252, a handful of new wallpapers were added, although XP's wallpapers are still present. Build 5342 would later add five folders consisting of 36 placeholder wallpapers, with two of those remaining in later builds.

All editions (except Starter)
By build 5355, most of the previous wallpapers were removed and replaced with an entirely new set of 1600x1200 wallpapers, with the widescreens ones being at 1600x900, oddly at 16:9 despite 16:10 being more common back then. However, the mountain lake wallpaper would stay, albeit at a higher resolution and slightly more cropped, along with two of the placeholder wallpapers. This set would be slightly updated in build 5469, where the default wallpaper is changed to the wallpaper that is img22 in the final release; the previous wallpaper was reallocated to img37.

Starter
When the Starter SKU was first added, it featured the same wallpaper set as other editions, but with the addition of the three wallpapers from the Indian version of Windows XP Starter Edition; Dunagiri served as the default wallpaper. By build 5355(?) the set of wallpapers that would appear in the final release were added, however with some differences. A few were later upgraded to widescreen 1600x1024, while img746 becomes more saturated, likely due to color space issues.

Note that the table below only shows wallpapers that feature differences from the final ones.

Build 5840.16389 onwards
Build 5840.16389 replaced the wallpapers with the ones that appear in the RTM release, adding new ones such as Hamad Darwish's two wallpapers, while removing a handful of them, including the Beta 2 default wallpaper and replacing most of the Light Auras with designed ones as opposed to photography.

Sample Pictures
[todo: table] The 15 sample pictures were added in build 5310; the XP ones are also installed as the package for them is still included, although it was removed by build 5329. Creek and Garden were replaced with completely different images by build 5337. Eventually, Microsoft would make some slight alterations to the sample pictures such as adjusting the saturation, although many of these could be due to color space changes.

User Account Pictures
The user account pictures were added in build 53xx. [elaborate]

Logon backgrounds
Logon backgrounds were added in build 4015.

Pre-reset
In builds 4048 (?) to 4093, the logon background has been changed to a solid black color.