Chess (Windows XP)

chess; Chess Pieces (Windows Live Messenger)
Image information
Original title	Chess Pieces
Licensed from	Corbis
Originates from	Corbis
Photographer	Mark Karrass
License type	Royalty free
Windows information
Software	Windows XP; Windows Live Messenger (6.1 to 2009)
Type	User account picture (Windows XP); Display picture (Windows Live Messenger)
Resolution	48x48 (Windows XP); 96x96 (Windows Live Messenger)
File type	Bitmap (.bmp) (Windows XP); PNG (.png) (Windows Live Messenger)

chess, originally known as and in Windows Live Messenger as Chess Pieces, is a user account/display picture included in Windows XP and Windows Live Messenger, licensed from Corbis. It was taken by Mark Karrass, who also took several other images used in Windows XP. It depicts five chess pieces on a board.

History

The original version that was available from Corbis (and on the Corbis CD, Arts and Entertainment) features an aqua background instead of red. However, Microsoft recolored it to red for both XP and MSN/Windows Live Messenger; a few other Windows user account pictures have also been recolored from the original images, although it is not clear why this was done. Mark Karrass also took two other chess photos for Corbis that appear on the same CD, most likely using the same board set.

While it was included in XP from build 2419 onwards, being one of the first user account pictures to be included, build 2475 and 2486 oddly use CHESS from Windows 3.0 in its place. This was reverted in later builds.

It is no longer commercially available from anywhere except Photononstop, which also features many other Corbis images that were taken down from most other sites.