Why do GNOME's default wallpapers look so washed out?

Ask Fedora
1

I checked /usr/share/backgrounds and found a bunch of high-resolution JXL and WEBP files that have surprisingly small file sizes and poor visual quality.

2

Can you provide the name of the files in question and the package they came from?

You should be able to check the package with:

dnf provides /usr/share/backgrounds/full/path/to/file

3

Here are a few examples that fall into this category:

balls-d.jxl
balls-d.jxl

f44-01-day.jxl  
f44-01-night.jxl

fold-d.jxl
fold-l.jxl

tarkov-pills-d.jxl 
tarkov-pills-l.jxl

I feel these could have been rendered much better.

4

I think the guidelines in the GNOME Backgrounds README are responsible for making the wallpapers look a bit washed out—specifically the strict file size limits, compression requirements, and scaling constraints.