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Apple’s Classic Mac OS X Wallpapers, Remastered To 6K For Modern Devices
By Mikelle Leow, 07 Sep 2021
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Image via OSX.photo
As of this year, your 12-inch Retina MacBook from 2015 is now—in Apple’s own words—a “vintage” product. But don’t feel too old yet.
As a side project and an ode to a beloved chunk of Apple history, designer and developer Rafael Conde remastered built-in Mac OS X and OS X wallpapers into full 6K resolution and added support for the entire P3 wide color gamut.
I made a tiny little thing over the weekend…
— Rafa (@rafahari) September 6, 2021
🪐Mac OS X Remastered Wallpapers (Galaxy Edition):
Classic desktop pictures modernized in 6K and P3 Color Gamut
→ https://t.co/UM9A3MuFEx pic.twitter.com/50z9SgrFRF
The refined versions are now available for free on OSX.photo. As a bonus, there are compatible sizes for the iPhone and iPad, too.
Conde told 9to5Mac that, to remaster the imagery, he used machine learning to upscale the original backgrounds, which he had to track down, before applying a P3 color space. Finally, he used machine learning again to denoise the images and “manually tweaked them to more closely match how I remembered them.”
It might be the enhancements, or the skyrocketing appeal of space travel, but the wallpapers are looking futuristic as ever. In truth, the newest of them is almost 10 years old.
You can find the selection—which includes Leopard and Snow Leopard’s aurora backgrounds, as well as Lion and Mountain Lion’s galaxy wallpapers—here.
Image via OSX.photo
Image via OSX.photo
It was super nostalgic designing the landing page with Myriad, and trying to recreate the look of 2008’s buttons ✨ pic.twitter.com/Cgn44sX1nk
— Rafa (@rafahari) September 6, 2021
[via 9to5Mac, images via OSX.photo]
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