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Fun With Transparent Screen Backgrounds
herberts writes "Looks like the amusement factor of 'transparent' screen background is getting bigger and bigger. The french Mac fan site Mac Bidouille opened up a dedicated part of their web site where fans can post shots of their transparent backgrounds." Other great transparent background shots can be found at Flickr.
This should take about ten seconds
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
But also very transient- move the computer, or just look at it from another angle, and the effect is destroyed.
And it has to be said: These people have way too much time on their hands!
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
I for one can see right through them.
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
For a CRT could you draw the electron gun and circuits.
Some people have entirely too much time on their hands.
Actually, this guy almost has his hands on the time.
AhahaHAHAHAHahahahaha I am so, so sorry.
.... They take a picture, put it as their backround, and then put the computer where the picture was taken. You seriously didn't figure that out?
This just in:
Microsoft has announced that they will be building technology for Transparent Desktops into their next-generation operating-system, Longhorn. Microsoft representatives report that this technology involves cutting the back out of the monitor to allow the image behind it to show through. When asked whether this would impede the monitor's ability to display images, Microsoft replied that this was an issue that will be addressed in SP1.
I downloaded one of the pictures and put it on my desktop, and it totally didn't look transparent at all.
Lame. And it's probably smaller than a Nomad.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I did it on my linux machine too! It's nice and transparent, although I suck at perspective.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
You posted a friggin' IMAGE GALLERY on the FRONT PAGE of SLASHDOT??
Whaddaya wanna do, KILL 'EM??
Yeah, and they apparently post on Slashdot.
I think that's how most were done, but it looks like a few may ghave been "done" by taking a picture, putting the monitor in place and putting a solid color on the background (with icons and such on top of that) and then taking a picture of that. The second picture was then merged with the first in Photoshop or a similar application by effects that mimic cromakey. The picture is only a picture, the actual view never existed.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I was going to ask why this phenomenon only seems to be a Mac thing. Now it's clear to me.
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When you only have one mouse button you tend to find extra time for other things.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Great - now I can stare some more at my cubical wall all day long.
Next, someone will figure out a way to tattoo that image onto the inside of my eyelids.
I totally agree... what a complete waste of time. And now I've gotta figure out a way to stuff all these pieces back into my monitor.
SO STUPID!
Following that idea, I want to be able to insert ghosts in relevant locations as I reposition a thusly equipped laptop.
:)
As in, you walk around the house, and if you hold the laptop screen two feet in front of your face at all times, it blends right in seamlessly. But if you point it at something like a sofa, it looks like someone is sitting on it, when in actuality there is nobody there. Smoothly pan the laptop so that the sofa is out of the shot, and the ghost moves with it. But if you shake the laptop, the "person" on the sofa would visibly respond to the shaking by trying to keep his balance. And then your hard drive would crash.
Doing this with cheap, amateur-grade equipment would be really cool. Get cracking on it, oh time wasters of the world! And then sell your work to some game/toy company!
"What's next, taking a screenshot of the desktop and putting that as the background as a prank?"
Been there, done that, made my co-worker cry in frustration because the computer was "locked" even after several reboots.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
A few pointers I figured out along the way:
- It's very important to keep the camera angle the same. If you've got a tripod, this is a good time to use it.
- Shooting perpendicular to the display (i.e. not at any sort of angle) is the simplest way of making things line up properly, since you don't have to stretch the backgrounds for perspective or whatever. (Some of the shots in the gallery are at angles and are very impressive in terms of difficulty.)
- Backgrounds with lots of stuff in them look cooler than "gosh, the wall shows behind the computer" in most cases. Elements that extend from behind the screen, or wrap around to the side or front can also be fun.
Next time I'm really bored, I'll try to work up something that has a mirror in it...Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
You smoke marijuana, don't you?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I am more amused by putting a camera pointing at my screen over my shoulder and using that as my live wallpaper. That whole endless hall of mirror effect amuses me greatly.
:)
Usually I'm just happy to play the movie I'm watching on my desktop though. A DVD Jukebox effect that plays nonstop is a great root window IMO.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Many folks are claiming the easy routes:
A) Take a picture, and move the screen where the picture was.
The problem with this is perspective. lenses are not flat scans of the world, and you'll see (in fact in some of the shots you do see) some perspective distortion, especially with stuff like vertical lines.
B)Take picture with and without screen and photochop it.
Actually, the best non-cheating way to do this is:
C)
1) Set your camera up on a tripod, at the scene where you want your monitor.
2) Remove monitor.
3) Take picture.
4) replace montor.
5) Take another picture.
up to here this is the same as method B), the photochopping. But instead of pasting the background (And cheating), you crop the first photo to the dimensions of the monitor in the second photo.
6) Set the cropped picture as background.
7) Take the money shot.
8) Wait for the pulitzer folks to get back to you.
It'd be cool if the transparency showed the inside of the monitor!
haha, Slashdot readers think alike. However, I took a screenshot of the desktop with and error message, photoshopped the error message to something really scary, set that image as the desktop. Man was my coworker tripping. The dumb tech support, too =)
Back a few years, IBM sold a laptop where you could detach the back cover of the lid, exposing the screen so that it could be placed on an overhead projector. I worked with Ted Selker who invented it, so I had a homemade prototype version. When I presented at conferences and everyone else struggled with F7 and video formats, I just whipped the back off my Thinkpad and put it on top of the overhead projector. I don't think anyone listened to my talk because they were all craning their necks to see what I had done with the display. All of the questions afterward were about where to buy such a nifty device rather than anything about my talk!
The removable back was also useful for working outdoors. You could put a white reflective surface behind the screen and backlight with sunlight, making it usable no matter how bright it was.
They'll probably implement the transparent background technology before PNG compatibility in IE.
Meanwhile, by the time they get it working, the OS community will have 16 different implementations of the TDT (Transparent DeskTop) standard, and SVG will have been extended to include it.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The Flickr link in the story only links to one person's photoset (no disrespect to that person, w00kie). The Transparent Screens group pool is much more interesting as it aggregates everyones transparent screen photos.
Wow. Are the people modding up parent the same people who find "How-To" papers on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to be useful information?
For what it's worth, you can get it to very nearly work if you have a distant background, then the error would be minimal.
If you know the distance to the object, you can do a distortion effect (I think a "punch" effect would be right, squeeze the center out towards the sides). That'd only work if the objects stays at a fairly fixed distance, if you have a glass window to the hallway you should be able to see people walking by just as if it was transparent.
If you wanted to make a really advanced variety, you could measure the distance by e.g. IR pulses or something and dynamicly apply the effect with different settings. That should work until you get as close as the camera can see (the camera must see what you would've seen in the upper left corner).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"haha, Slashdot readers think alike. However, I took a screenshot of the desktop with and error message, photoshopped the error message to something really scary, set that image as the desktop. Man was my coworker tripping. The dumb tech support, too =)"
Heh. You fools using desktop wallpaper to mess with other people, what a waste of time. I useta have a wallpaper image that was a screen-grab of my daily work apps. Boss comes by? *click* Desktop button! (Admittedly, though, I attempted to highlight my wallpaper a few times.)
Work avoidance > messin with people.
"Derp de derp."
Boss's PA had a monitor that attached with seperate R G and B BNC cables.
I swapped around the Red and Blue cables and carefully adjusted the colour settings in Windows 98 to swap all the R & B components around so all menus, etc looked normal.
Of course, the moment she started browsing websites all the images loaded wrong.
Took ages for them to figure out what was wrong - video driver reinstalls etc.
Got a written warning for that one, but was worth it!
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Just wait until OLED's are scaled up to a larger size and you will be able to have transparent backgrounds without the need for a digital camera.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It's a little disconcerting to see that no one has posted that Belgian surrealistic artist Rene Magritte did these type of images (painted canvas displaying background) back in the 1920s.
Don't you guys ever look through those big books of surrealistic art in bookstores and libraries? Much of the imagery that we consider 'weird' and 'futuristic' now was first conceived and painted back in the 1920s and 30s. Guys like Salvadore Dali, Yves Tanguy, Joan ('Ho-ahn') Miro, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte created the modern fantasy landscape look.
Their work was a step beyond the inflamed, blood-soaked, passionate, and sex-obsessed imagery of the 19th century Decadent Romanticists like Gustave Moreau, Klimt, and DeVille. It was this over-stimulated buffoonery led to the disaster of the Great War. Surrealism was an attempt to invoke the primal mental forces that lay beneath duty, religion, and even consciousness.
Since you'all have broadband you can find this images and paintings easily on the web. They are definitely worth the trouble to find and view them.