Windows 10 Compressing wallpapers

[Sokaz]

Windows 10 is basically killing my wallpapers. Even when I use a png, it still goes ahead and compresses the background to hell. How do I fix this?

[SpaceNugget]

1. make sure that you used the original full resolution image and not a thumbnail photo

2. make sure that the background is not set to fit or stretch or whatever.

3. test with the included images

 

report back with results.

[Sokaz]

1. make sure that you used the original full resolution image and not a thumbnail photo

2. make sure that the background is not set to fit or stretch or whatever.

3. test with the included images

 

report back with results.

 

You didn't include any images but,  everything seems fine. It's the full size image and it's not stretching or fit.

[Guest]

Try these wallpapers. They're uncompressed PNGs.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3l4RgXAeFedNjM5WkE2bGV5Njg

[SpaceNugget]

You didn't include any images but,  everything seems fine. It's the full size image and it's not stretching or fit.

I was referring to the images included with windows.

[Sokaz]

Try these wallpapers. They're uncompressed PNGs.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3l4RgXAeFedNjM5WkE2bGV5Njg

 

Look how much it compressed the wallpaper. Both my pc's are doing this for whatever reason.

 

[SpaceNugget]

I think you may be confused as to what compressed usually means in terms of images. I would suggest you find a trusted forum member who is willing to teamviewer your computer to help you set your background up the way you want it to look. the image you posted was natively a 1484x835 image. Try one that is the same resolution as your monitor, I suggest you try setting it to the default background for windows 10 and telling us if that works.

[Sokaz]

I think you may be confused as to what compressed usually means in terms of images. I would suggest you find a trusted forum member who is willing to teamviewer your computer to help you set your background up the way you want it to look. the image you posted was natively a 1484x835 image. Try one that is the same resolution as your monitor, I suggest you try setting it to the default background for windows 10 and telling us if that works.

 

It's not like I don't know what I'm talking about. When you set your wallpaper, windows will compress it and use the compressed version of the image instead of the image you wanted. I remember it didn't used to be so bad in windows 7 but... I have however went and replaced the compressed version of the wallpaper with the default one and that worked for a while. I'm asking here because I'm looking for work arounds.

[Guest]

Make sure to use a local theme and not the cloud one. 

[Sokaz]

Make sure to use a local theme and not the cloud one. 

 

You mean the one that syncs my account themes? I have that turned off.

[Sokaz]

Bump.

[LAwLz]

I haven't tested this in Windows 10, but in Windows 7 you could not set a PNG image as your wallpaper. What Windows 7 did was silently convert your PNG wallpaper into a JPEG and then used that. It was super easy to spot because all my wallpapers have gradients and that got totally ruined. I found that converting the images from PNG to 100% quality JPEG in Photoshop helped tremendously in terms of quality.

 

 

 

Edit: I just tested it and it seems like Windows 10 don't convert your image to a JPEG in Windows 10. It does something to it and I am not sure what or why.

If you are interested, you can find the exact file used by Windows for your background in this folder:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

 

The file called "TranscodedWallpaper" is just a regular JPEG or PNG file without the file extension. You can even add the file extension yourself (rename the file) and the file will open just like any other image. Don't do that without a backup though. I don't know what happens if the wallpaper file suddenly disappears. When I set a ~400KB PNG file as my wallpaper it got converted into a ~700KB PNG file and placed in the themes folder with the name "TranscodedWallpaper". I have no idea why Microsoft does this.

[Sokaz]

I haven't tested this in Windows 10, but in Windows 7 you could not set a PNG image as your wallpaper. What Windows 7 did was silently convert your PNG wallpaper into a JPEG and then used that. It was super easy to spot because all my wallpapers have gradients and that got totally ruined. I found that converting the images from PNG to 100% quality JPEG in Photoshop helped tremendously in terms of quality.

 

 

 

Edit: I just tested it and it seems like Windows 10 don't convert your image to a JPEG in Windows 10. It does something to it and I am not sure what or why.

If you are interested, you can find the exact file used by Windows for your background in this folder:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes

 

The file called "TranscodedWallpaper" is just a regular JPEG or PNG file without the file extension. You can even add the file extension yourself (rename the file) and the file will open just like any other image. Don't do that without a backup though. I don't know what happens if the wallpaper file suddenly disappears. When I set a ~400KB PNG file as my wallpaper it got converted into a ~700KB PNG file and placed in the themes folder with the name "TranscodedWallpaper". I have no idea why Microsoft does this.

I swear to god once most of my games get on linux I will leave windows forever.

[GoodBytes]

Can you post your wallpaper, I want to try. Because for me it works great.

[Sokaz]

Can you post your wallpaper, I want to try. Because for me it works great.

 

I actually found a fix. If you go into the cached files folder, you will see a wallpaper there. If you copy the name, then rename the wallpaper you want to set to the copied name, and replace the wallpaper in the cached files folder with the renamed one, you can keep refreshing until the wallpaper breaks and then wait a couple seconds and refresh again. The wallpaper will appear without a shit load of artifacts. I don't know how long this will work for though.