The 5 Best Sites for Downloading Gorgeous Retina Wallpaper

Bored with Apple's desktop backgrounds? Here's where can you find the crème de la crème artwork without springing for an ultra-megapixel camera.

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So you’ve finally joined the Retina club and bought yourself one of these newfangled 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros. Or maybe you’re already a card-carrying member, toting a third-gen iPad or Apple‘s boutique 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, released in June. Say you’re bored with Apple’s desktop backgrounds. Where can you find the crème de la crème artwork on the interwebs without springing for an ultra-megapixel camera and playing the shoot-and-crop game?

I was in this pickle when I sprang for a 15-inch Retina Pro this summer, a laptop that runs at a then-unheard-of 2880 x 1880 pixel resolution. That’s a lot of pixels jammed into a screen just 15.4 inches, corner to corner — over five million total. Or take the 13-inch Pro’s 2560 x 1600 display, with over four million pixels — higher than your average desktop monitor. Even the third-gen iPad’s 2048 x 1536 resolution (on a 9.7-inch screen) is up there, well above high-def television’s best of 1080p, or 1920 x 1080.

Finding decent artwork at these levels is a crapshoot. You can track down imagery using Google Images with the “larger than” or “exactly” size options, but you’re corralled by search phrases, and even then, you’re playing hunt and peck, shuffling through so much dreck.

On the following pages, you’ll find recommendations for the best Retina wallpaper sites on the web — not of upscaled pictures or someone’s amateur photo collection, but serious, professional photography and digital artwork.

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