Written: 2025-05-21

Wallpapers

I often take landscape pictures with my phone. A few days ago, I thought it would be nice to use them as wallpapers. Unfortunately, many of them were taken with digital zoom (for framing reasons) and are, therefore, very blurry on a large monitor. Which was disappointing, because I really like some of them.

So I had the idea to filter them through Michael Fogleman's "primitive"[a]. It's a program that recreates an image using triangles, rectangles, ellipses or other primitives. It takes quite a while to run (at the settings I picked) but the end result is an infinite-resolution SVG, which solves the problem. Most of the appeal of these pictures is in their colors anyway.

[a] fogleman/primitive: Reproducing images with geometric primitives

So, here are the pictures. You can download these and use them as wallpapers. Most of them can be cropped without losing much.

The images below were all taken with my phone, lightly edited on the iOS camera app, then processed with "primitive", converted to PNG with Inkscape and compressed with Zopfli. The PNGs are all 1600 pixels wide, to fit my monitor exactly, but you can easily use the SVGs instead.

License is CC-BY-NC, so for public usage, give credit and don't use commercially.

A picture of a cloud in the sunset.
SVG version.

Taken on the road, returning home from Campos do Jordão. I really like the colors.

A picture of birds in the sunset.
SVG version.

Taken from my workplace's parking lot. I saw the birds aligning with the moon, and took a shot.

A picture of birds over the sea.
SVG version.

Taken from the continent, looking at Florianópolis.

A picture of clouds.
SVG version.

Taken from my bedroom window.

A picture of a plane flying over a power line.
SVG version.

Taken near my church. There's an airport in that direction, so when I go to church, I often see airplanes flying over. This time there was time to pull out my phone and take a picture.

A picture of a mountain covered in trees, with sky and clouds above.
SVG version.

Taken from Outlet Catarina. I was bored while my family shopped for clothes.

A picture of clouds above a building in construction.
SVG version.

Taken from just behind Granja Julieta train station. The building behind the trees is the station. The clouds looked so fluffy.

A picture of a plane passing through clouds.
SVG version.

Taken from my bedroom window. The black thing is an airplane. This picture was extremely blurry, but the processing worked miracles. The colors are some of my favourite.