Desktop background picture
Desktop background picture
If you've been following the versions 2 and 1.09 alpha/beta releases, there is a desktop background named ve2ijo.jpg, which looks out to the sea. The view is really nice, but if I remember correctly, this is a photo of the oncoming tsunami in Asia in 2004 that caused sorrow among many people. Maybe am wrong, but it might be useful for the source of the picture to make a verification. Thanks.
(when you mentioned it before)
talking about strange humor, this looks impressive, too *ducking_and_running_away*
http://dotpups.de/pics/backgrounds/fire-GB.jpg
http://dotpups.de/pics/backgrounds/fire-GB.jpg
This one I saw on several screenshots by different users, so many seem to like it:
http://dotpups.de/pics/backgrounds/35826-stormy.jpg
Mark
http://dotpups.de/pics/backgrounds/35826-stormy.jpg
Mark
Re: Desktop background picture
raffy, in this particular case I'm happy to say that you are wrong.raffy wrote:The view is really nice, but if I remember correctly, this is a photo of the oncoming tsunami in Asia in 2004 that caused sorrow among many people. Maybe am wrong, but it might be useful for the source of the picture to make a verification. Thanks.
I cropped and lightened an original image I found on the internet called NATURE-SeaLappedBeach_1600x1200.jpg. I don't have the URL at hand.
What looks like a great wave is actually low clouds on the horizon...
I hope this will put our minds at ease.
Paul
EDIT: I found the original: http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/ ... 0x1200.jpg
Oh, on this topic...
Is it possible to "disapear" the bird and leave just sky?
At certain resolutions it just looks like a spot with a white aura around. More like a picture defect than a feature.
Is it possible to "disapear" the bird and leave just sky?
At certain resolutions it just looks like a spot with a white aura around. More like a picture defect than a feature.
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Ha, ha, yes I agreerarsa wrote: Is it possible to "disapear" the bird and leave just sky?
At certain resolutions it just looks like a spot with a white aura around. More like a picture defect than a feature.
Part of the problem is the high compression I used to minimize the size of the image. Perhaps someone with a little more graphics experience can help improve it?
Thanks
Thanks, Paul. It's a really nice view...
Thanks for the link, too. The spot/bird will be easy to fix in the hi-res image.
Mu, thanks for the link to "stormy". I have one interesting image, too, but it is only 640x480: http://ph-islands.net/puppy/clouds_n_sky.jpg , probably good for the OLPC.
Thanks for the link, too. The spot/bird will be easy to fix in the hi-res image.
Mu, thanks for the link to "stormy". I have one interesting image, too, but it is only 640x480: http://ph-islands.net/puppy/clouds_n_sky.jpg , probably good for the OLPC.
In my opinion, the bird should be removed completely. Also one of the reasons I cropped the image was to lower the shoreline and mainly have sky to avoid cluttering the screen (ie, a lot of rocks and sand in the original image would obscure icons).Nathan F wrote:I can do one of two things here people. I can
A: remove the bird completely
B: get the original high res image and see if I can shrink it without so much detail loss
The problem with the original is that it is under-exposed and the horizon tilts slightly. I checked my notes: after cropping, I rotated the image 1 degree clock-wise, used gamma=140 to lighten it, sharpened it somewhat and then saved it as .jpg with quality=65.
From his post, it sounded like raffy was going to make an attempt to remove the bird. Otherwise I can give it another go.
HTH,
Paul
Ok, I gave it a try - seems to have worked...
What do you think?
What do you think?
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- Beach1024x768.jpg
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1200x900
Thanks, Paul, and sorry, I was too slow. I am still training myself in mtPaint.
My monitor seems to miss the deep blue, so I followed your instructions to rotate the image, then did a 1200x900 image (97 KB), but it shows only under the background option "exactfit". So I scaled it to 1024x768 (67 KB) and "fillscreen" now works.
My monitor seems to miss the deep blue, so I followed your instructions to rotate the image, then did a 1200x900 image (97 KB), but it shows only under the background option "exactfit". So I scaled it to 1024x768 (67 KB) and "fillscreen" now works.
Re: 1200x900
raffy, that that makes two of usraffy wrote:I am still training myself in mtPaint.
It's amazing what you can do with mtPaint. I didn't think it would be so easy to get rid of that splotch...er, bird in the image. What I did was to magnify the image until the pixels became little squares, then I marked an area of sky near the bird, draged the marked area over the bird and presto...the bird was gone. First time I tried that and wow - couldn't be easier! 
Dougal, I appreciate your feedback and it is fair criticism. I also liked the Puppy wallpaper, at least for a few days. Then I just had to remove it!
The problem as I see it is in making an attractive background that doesn't obscure the icons. That's why like images with a lot of sky.
I like nature images because I don't get tired of looking at them. It's like looking through a window at the view outside. But at the same time they are the hardest to compress like you illustrated, because nature doesn't use 'solid' colors.
Perhaps we should consider lower compression? What would be a good compromise? 100K? And then limit the number of images that come with Puppy to maybe two - one nature image and one drawn?
Maybe, as you suggested, we could use an image with more clouds to 'hide' the artifacts? That would be nice. At least they don't obscure the icons (the clouds that is ).
I dislike the arrogant Microsoft and their unfinished products, but one thing they are good at is the user interface. That they chose an image with rolling hills and clouds as their default background image in XP says a lot. It also blends well with the desktop icons. I would still like to find a variation on that image for Puppy.
The problem as I see it is in making an attractive background that doesn't obscure the icons. That's why like images with a lot of sky.
I like nature images because I don't get tired of looking at them. It's like looking through a window at the view outside. But at the same time they are the hardest to compress like you illustrated, because nature doesn't use 'solid' colors.
Perhaps we should consider lower compression? What would be a good compromise? 100K? And then limit the number of images that come with Puppy to maybe two - one nature image and one drawn?
Maybe, as you suggested, we could use an image with more clouds to 'hide' the artifacts? That would be nice. At least they don't obscure the icons (the clouds that is
).I dislike the arrogant Microsoft and their unfinished products, but one thing they are good at is the user interface. That they chose an image with rolling hills and clouds as their default background image in XP says a lot. It also blends well with the desktop icons. I would still like to find a variation on that image for Puppy.
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Nathan F
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Dougal brings up some valid points, but let me try to explain exactly why these effects happen to an image.
This has a little to do with the rendering of gradients in an image, and is a constant worry for graphic designers and photographers. When I say 'gradient' I am referring to a smooth transition between two similar colors, which is exactly what you get in an image of the sky. In order for gradient to render smoothly there must be no gaps in the colors, in other words it must go smoothly from color A to color B to color C, without skipping color B. If it skips a color, no matter how similar it might be, you get what is known as 'banding' between color A and color C, which can show up as a line or ring separating the two colors.
Now take for instance the method that the jpg format uses to compress an image. This involves basically examining adjacent pixels to see how similar they are and if it finds that they are indeed very similar, it will then throw out part of the info. Instead of 'make pixel A black, then make pixel B dark grey' you get 'make pixels A and B black', to oversimplify things a bit. If you can wrap your head around this concept then it is easy to see that an image that consists of a large area of sky does not compress as transarently as an image that has a lot of fine detail. It will almost always compress smaller, but you will notice the compression a lot more.
A similar effect can also be observed just by setting the bit depth on your monitor lower, which renders images with a large gradient just horribly. This explains my thinking when I did cut down the wallpapers a little bit. What got left in was the seascape (default) the button and the plain blue that says 'Puppy Linux' in the lower right corner. That third one was specifically for people who find that the default image renders badly on their monitor, probably because their hardware is older and doesn't support 24 bit mode (or even 16 bit mode in some extreme cases). In fact one of the largest reasons a lot of imaging pros consider the Gimp inadequate is it's lack of support for higher color depth, like what is in photoshop. The resulting images are just fine for web use (which is where Gimp really shines anyway) but are a little less than breathtaking when you try to do a gallery quality print. Make no bones about it, unless the Gimp developers take this seriously no professionals will ever adopt the program wholeheartedly, myself included (I instead use Cinepaint, for this reason, even though it's designed for the motion picture industry and is far from ideal for still photographers in some other ways).
Now, there are ways around this problem. The most effective method is to use what is called a 'dithered' gradient. What dithering does is this, instead of a sharp transition from color A to color C it puts a few pixels of color C into the area near the border, but on the color A side of it, and vice versa. This makes the area of transition a bit harder to spot and really improves the image in most cases. This is kind of what I did when I reworked the button background. If you look at it you might notice that it's not just a solid color background anymore but a subtle gradient. In order to get it to render better in 16 bit mode on poor quality monitors (like the one on the laptop I'm using right now) I applied a slight cloth texture to the affected area, and then used a film grain filter over most of the image. It renders pretty nicely in 16 bit color now, and it's a whole lot more professional and polished looking than the solid color was to boot. Of course this is a purely subjective evaluation.
We are left though with the issue of the wide expanse of sky and what to do with it. Personally I felt that the image achieved a pretty good balance on the size issue, although if I had done it myself from scratch it would probably be a bit different. I say leave it, but if there's a lot of sentiment for getting rid of it then it goes. I was under the impression that a lot of people liked that one myself.
Nathan
This has a little to do with the rendering of gradients in an image, and is a constant worry for graphic designers and photographers. When I say 'gradient' I am referring to a smooth transition between two similar colors, which is exactly what you get in an image of the sky. In order for gradient to render smoothly there must be no gaps in the colors, in other words it must go smoothly from color A to color B to color C, without skipping color B. If it skips a color, no matter how similar it might be, you get what is known as 'banding' between color A and color C, which can show up as a line or ring separating the two colors.
Now take for instance the method that the jpg format uses to compress an image. This involves basically examining adjacent pixels to see how similar they are and if it finds that they are indeed very similar, it will then throw out part of the info. Instead of 'make pixel A black, then make pixel B dark grey' you get 'make pixels A and B black', to oversimplify things a bit. If you can wrap your head around this concept then it is easy to see that an image that consists of a large area of sky does not compress as transarently as an image that has a lot of fine detail. It will almost always compress smaller, but you will notice the compression a lot more.
A similar effect can also be observed just by setting the bit depth on your monitor lower, which renders images with a large gradient just horribly. This explains my thinking when I did cut down the wallpapers a little bit. What got left in was the seascape (default) the button and the plain blue that says 'Puppy Linux' in the lower right corner. That third one was specifically for people who find that the default image renders badly on their monitor, probably because their hardware is older and doesn't support 24 bit mode (or even 16 bit mode in some extreme cases). In fact one of the largest reasons a lot of imaging pros consider the Gimp inadequate is it's lack of support for higher color depth, like what is in photoshop. The resulting images are just fine for web use (which is where Gimp really shines anyway) but are a little less than breathtaking when you try to do a gallery quality print. Make no bones about it, unless the Gimp developers take this seriously no professionals will ever adopt the program wholeheartedly, myself included (I instead use Cinepaint, for this reason, even though it's designed for the motion picture industry and is far from ideal for still photographers in some other ways).
Now, there are ways around this problem. The most effective method is to use what is called a 'dithered' gradient. What dithering does is this, instead of a sharp transition from color A to color C it puts a few pixels of color C into the area near the border, but on the color A side of it, and vice versa. This makes the area of transition a bit harder to spot and really improves the image in most cases. This is kind of what I did when I reworked the button background. If you look at it you might notice that it's not just a solid color background anymore but a subtle gradient. In order to get it to render better in 16 bit mode on poor quality monitors (like the one on the laptop I'm using right now) I applied a slight cloth texture to the affected area, and then used a film grain filter over most of the image. It renders pretty nicely in 16 bit color now, and it's a whole lot more professional and polished looking than the solid color was to boot. Of course this is a purely subjective evaluation.
We are left though with the issue of the wide expanse of sky and what to do with it. Personally I felt that the image achieved a pretty good balance on the size issue, although if I had done it myself from scratch it would probably be a bit different. I say leave it, but if there's a lot of sentiment for getting rid of it then it goes. I was under the impression that a lot of people liked that one myself.
Nathan
Bring on the locusts ...