Neutral-Balanced Desktop Wallpaper

Neutral-Balanced, Compartmentalized Desktop Wallpaper

Here are some wallpapers for you to keep your folders cleaned up and organized on your desktop. I find it helpful to keep my folders organized and sorted by day of the week depending on the project(s). The background is middle gray, based on CIELAB. This is the 50% gray you’ll see if you use Edit > Fill > 50% Gray in the menu. In the sRGB color space, middle gray is equivalent to 46.6% brightness. In 24-bit color, this is rounded to RGB value (119,119,119) or #777777. The thought behind this was that I was looking for something that be roughly akin to an 18% gray card, and neutral on the eyes so that I could reset my focus when staring at the computer all day. 

I’ve included RGB & CMYK chips and gradients. Also, B&W chips in 5% increments taken from the swatches in the default swatch palette in Photoshop. On the bottom are two B&W gradients. In the center section, a simple B&W star as a focal point. I didn’t want to get to crazy with star shapes/patterns since the point was not to tire your eyes, but I felt a small star at the center wouldn’t be too disruptive to the human eyes.

There are boxes for the days of the week, a large box for Projects, a To Do box, a Sort box, an untitled/empty box below the center swatches, and a right column and smaller box below for drives and external devices.

In addition to the various .png files (depending on your desktop size), I’m also linking to the original Photoshop files so you can modify it to your tastes if you’d prefer. I am using Helvetica Neue for the headers, and in case you don’t have that font I’ve included a rasterized layer (turned off) in the layer folders.  

iMac:

PSD: 5120x2880

MacBook Pro/MacBook/Air:

PSD: 2880x1800