Wallpapering

I tend to change my PC's desktop background (known colloquially as 'wallpaper') about every month. Almost always the image is a picture I've snapped on a recent trip, having got into the habit of trying to take a shot or two that contains a large area of the same colour suitable for displaying icons and a calender on top of. However, recently I had the nice idea to create a series of Great Composer wallpapers which could be easily made from 'found' objects on the internet (a la Berio) and knocked up in an hour or two using fairly simple tools in a graphics programme. Here I'm going to show you how it's done, should you wish to copy the concept yourself or just are curious.

The basic idea consists of using a portrait of the composer, their signature and a suitable excerpt of their music. All of these objects could be found from open-source websites, chiefly Wikipedia and IMSLP, and then with a little bit of experimentation arranged to fill the screen space. Depending on the images used and direction the portrait faces, there is scope for some variation with the composition.  The program I used for the project was Paint.NET, a free open-source raster graphics program that was initially developed by Microsoft as a replacement for the standard Windows Paint but then dropped and left in the hands of a community of internet users. It would be an excellent program even if it were payware - it does nearly everything that Photoshop or Coral Draw will, although if you want vector graphics you'll have to get the equally excellent Inkscape. The reason for not using this instead (vector graphics, should you be curious, are a system whereby the pixels become infinitely small as you zoom in and so images don't get blurred) is partly that file sizes will be much larger and that I have a much greater level of proficiency on Paint.NET. Also, it has a number of plugins included that we will be using for this project.

Setting up/Portrait:

The first stage is to set up the canvas for the wallpaper.  As I'm creating this background for a standard 17" flatscreen monitor, I will be using a resolution of 1024x468 pixels, so I create a new document in Paint.NET and alter the canvas size to these dimensions (choose Image - Canvas Size).  (If you are unsure how big your screen is, right click on your desktop, choose 'Properties' and look at the 'Settings' tab. There will be a slider half-way down which will show your current resolution - most likely this is already at 1024x468).  The next thing is to choose a subject for our wallpaper. The composer I settled on was Haydn: definitely one of the 'greats'; and with several portraits to choose from available in high-resolution. As we need to show both the portrait and some music, I intended to divide the space about half-and-half. This also means that when our background is 'in situ', desktop icons can all fit over one side or the other depending on what offers the best contrast and visibility. A little searching on Wikipedia Commons brought me to the Thomas Hardy portrait which I copied and pasted into Paint, and then resized to fit just the head into the frame.

At this point we need to introduce a new concept which is one of the best features of Paint.NET and similar programs: layers. In ordinary MS Paint, everything is on the same layer and only one colour can be displayed as 'on top'. If you draw over something, it disappears. Cut an area out and you cut down to the background. But with Paint.NET, we can have multiple layers of a drawing superimposed on top of each other. This means you can draw a background and then create another layer (or several) on top, on which you can draw, move, cut, paste and alter anything without affecting the layer(s) below or above.  We're going to exploit this feature in making our wallpaper.

The Haydn portrait I've just copy-pasted will sit on top of a background layer, which we'll create in a minute. What we need to do first is to 'cut out' his head so we can add a background to avoid an untidy difference between the square portrait and the rest of the screen (I experimented with stretching the painting's background to fill the space, and the result was some way from satisfactory).  There is no easy way of doing this other than to get out the eraser tool and carefully go round the edge of the wig and features with a small tip size. My tip is to release the mouse frequently; this means if you make a mistake and have to hit 'undo' you'll only lose a small amount of correct erasing.

The result of somewhat painstaking work with the Eraser tool.

I decided to leave 'Papa' Haydn's hand and pen in, as it makes a nice touch and would have looked a little odd otherwise.  I have also left in the painted background behind him as this serves our purpose quite well already.  Once all this is complete, I name the layer 'Portrait' or something similar for clarity (select the layer and choose 'Layer Properties' from the small menu at the bottom of the Layers window) and save. We're not quite finished with this layer yet, but for now let's move on to creating the background.

Background:

Create a new layer from the window and name it 'Background'. Then - and this is important - move it down using the arrows to below the portrait layer we already have. Anything we draw in this new layer will be visible only where the portrait layer is transparent - the chequered space in the screenshot above. (This is possible due to the file having something called an 'alpha layer', but we don't need to worry too much about the workings of this for our current project).  Rather than a single colour background, I wanted something slightly mottled that matched the oil paint of the portrait. To get this, in the background layer I stretched a rectangle over the entire canvas (make sure it's set to 'Draw filled shape' at the top when the polygon tool is selected) and then in the visible area scribbled a load of wiggles over it in green, brown and tan.  Making sure only this background layer was selected, I then used the Gaussian Blur tool (Effects-Blurs-Gaussian Blur) on this layer in two separate passes, turning up the blur radius until the wiggles were very subtle. I also ran the 'Oil Painting' effect on this layer, although I'm not sure how much difference this actually made after all the blurring.  The finished effect is very subtle but looks much more classy than a plain colour.

The next thing to do is to return to the portrait layer and run another plugin from the Blurs tab called 'Feather'. It may appear at first glance that this has done nothing, but look again at the edges with the background layer displayed. They will have been blurred outwards a little, removing the 'hard' join between layers. We're done with the portrait layer now.

Music:

Create another new layer and name it 'Music'. It needs to be moved down between the two existing layers - it will be on top of the background but beneath the portrait. At this point I needed to choose a suitable excerpt form the literature to represent the composer. I settled on a passage almost immediately - The Heavens are Telling from The Creation, which is possibly his most famous and masterly work.  I decided just to use the vocal lines rather than including the orchestral accompaniment, but this is a personal judgement.  The staves can be captured by taking a screen shot of the vocal score from IMSLP and pasting it into a new document. To get the music to sit on top of the background we're going to need to cut out all the spaces. Trim using the 'Crop to selection' tool and then get to work with the Magic Wand tool to remove anything that isn't ink. The Wand selects any area bounded by the same colour and will allow us to erase the 'holes' between ledger lines and notes far neater than we could ever do by hand.  Again, there is no quick way of doing this: we're going to have to just keep clicking until all the white on the page is removed and we can see the chequers of the alpha layer.

Having done this, there was one little addition I wanted to make: the score only showed the words in English, and I rather wanted to have the German text as well. Apart from personal satisfaction and an acknowledgement of Haydn's nationality, this would also better make the staves fill the space. The German text was copied from another score and then typed in Paint.NET using the text tool, getting the font as close as possible to the existing type. I also put it into italics just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately the program's text editor does not not seem to have any provision for special characters, so to get the umlauts in 'erzählen' and 'Hände' I had to manually draw pairs of dots and position them over the letters. They've come out rather faint but they're there. I also had to move the existing staves to fit the new lines of text in. This was done by moving all the text to a new drawing, then very carefully selecting each part with the lasso tool and copy-pasting it into a new layer.  I then moved this selection up a few pixels and copy-pasted the German text (already aligned with the notes) into the layer before manoeuvring the whole lot in position so it was aligned above the rest of the staves. This was done separately for each voice until I had four layers which could be merged back into one (we'll cover merging at the end). The only problem that now remained was to fill in the gaps in the stave brace: this was done by selecting the existing area and stretching it over the gap from each side like elastic. Done!

Having added the additional text, the lines of the staves were manoeuvred back into position.

As the wallpaper has a dark background we need a light image on top. To do this for the music I selected the image and used the 'Invert colours' tool to turn the black to white, then copy-pasted the whole lot back over to the 'Music' layer of the original file. I also reduced the transparency of this layer a little and added a very slight blur to avoid the harsh contrast created by sharp pure white. It serves as a sort of 'semi-background' and also seems to match the colour of Haydn's wig...

The result is very satisfactory. I enlarged the layer and moved it across to position the music tucked slightly behind the portrait - again personal taste.  The inclusion of the line 'The wonder of his work/displays the firmament' seems particularly fitting, and I would like to think this could be seen as alluding to the mastery of Haydn's music as well as the creation text. All that remains now is to place Haydn's signature and dates in a new 'Text' layer. The signature (there are two different Haydn signatures, I chose the one with his initials in) was found on IMSLP and adapted in much the same way as the music: white background cut out using Magic Wand, then the colours inverted and moved into position at the bottom left on Joe's shoulder . The name and dates were done in Paint.NET's own text tool and positioned top right.

Finishing:

The final stage is to make this into a usable picture file by flattening it. If we've been saving our work regularly, as wise precautions advise, the default file type will be one with a .pdn extension. This is Paint.NET's own file format, one which supports the layering we've been using. However, we can't use a file like this as a normal picture because no other program can actually display a Paint. NET file with layers, so we need to change it into a .png, .jpeg, .gif or similar format.  To do so, we need to merge all the layers together into one. Paint.NET makes this easy for us by including a 'Merge layers down' tool in the Layers window, but first we need to double-check what goes on top of what and move them up or down if necessary. The order of layers in the window should be Text- Portrait- Music-Background. Starting with the top layer, hit the 'Merge down' button and the two layers will combine into one. When you've finished, the drawing will be a single-layer image that can be saved in any picture format. I would recommend using a png or a jpeg to keep the file size down, but check the quality is turned up to maximum. I saved it as 'Haydn desktop'.

All that remains is to navigate to the new file, right-click and choose 'Set as Desktop Background'. Give the cogs a moment or two to whirr and you should have Haydn sitting as your background screen.

The finished article in use.

A few concluding thoughts:

• This concept is highly versatile as long as one has a portrait image and another work example to use. It could easily be adapted for any figure or object of history. As mentioned, there is scope for variation of the basic idea: the portrait could be bigger, smaller, face the other way, the signature could be elsewhere, different fonts, etc.
• Oil paintings will probably produce a more satisfactory result than colour photographs, as they are easier to merge with other colours and avoid overly sharp edges when cut around.
• Using a fairly dark colour scheme seems to have worked well with the bright icons and calendar that sit on top of it. All are still legible and easy to locate, one of the design principles of desktop wallpaper.
• Be aware that with a system tray at the bottom of the screen, some of the image will be obscured. Luckily, this doesn't seem to create any adverse effect in this case.
• The next one of these will probably be Mozart. I plan to offer these as free downloads from this blog once I have a small collection.

The golden rules of blogging

1. Always post something interesting

This goes without saying, really. I happen to seek 'interestingness' in everything even if its precise definition is somewhat woolly.  Perhaps it means less regular updates, but hey, quality not quantity. 

2. Never post something that people can get elsewhere

There must be millions of blogs about fashion, dogs, aimless musings on life and other trivia. Why would the average surfer pick one over another?  On the other hand, if you write quality material about Gambian and Senegalese stamp collecting, your life as a deckhand on a ship made from recycled chair legs or, in the case of ITM, classical music and other unique tidbits, it is more likely your blog will be unique enough to attract a small but regular band of readers.

3. Check your facts

Laziness in researching a subject, credulity that leads one to unthinkingly reproduce myths and a general lack of scrutiny blight much journalism today.  When done well, this point often feeds nicely into #1, for research often throws up further interesting facts and ideas.

4. Check presentation, spelling and grammar

Again, goes without saying. There's a spell-checker in Blogger, so it's not unreasonable to expect its use, along with a few minutes proofreading.  I find sloppy editing a real turn-off, although I would tentatively suggest that we should allow one error every now and then just to convince oneself the prose has been written by a human. Likewise, the layout of content should be condusive to readability and consistancy of style.  (Incidentaly, I've inserted one spelling or grammatical error in every sentence of this item - post any spotted in the comments box).

5. Never link to anything unnecessary

Very tempting to pepper a post with all manner of links - less easy to find the best one to illustrate the point.  Links should provide something the text can't, be that a picture, a diagram, more specialist knowledge of a subject or simply an interesting aside.

6. Care about what you're doing

This covers all the above.  Unsurprisingly, if I were to draw up a 'golden rules of composition' or indeed of anything I suspect they would be remarkably similar to the above.  When it comes to quality, the same principles apply to most things.  In short, good blogging is that which is professional, necessary and done with integrity.  All of my favourite blogs in the sidebar stick to these principles, and I strive for this one to do so too. 

Birthday numbers

Sometime today or tomorrow, In The Mists will receive it's two thousandth visitor. This milestone looks set to near-coincide with the blog's first anniversary, which is a happy occurrence. Indeed, I'm pleased that I've been able to come up with enough content that the post count is still going strong, and can see no reason for this to change. Cheers!

As Leonard Slatkin used to say in place of a Last Night speech, some facts:

Traffic to the blog has increased overall, beginning with 149 page-views in the first month of its existence and increasing to 314 in September 2011. The lowest month was December 2010 with just 60 page-views. I (and, judging by forum posts, many other bloggers) seem unable not to include our own page-views in the count, but as this is at best once or twice a week when visiting the blog to log in I hope it is not too statistically significant - and anyway, it still counts as a page-view.


Predictably, the majority of traffic comes from the United Kingdom. Currently, 1454 hits have been from UK domain addresses, which accounts for nearly 90% of visitors. The next (but significantly smaller) country is the United States, again unremarkable due to us being 'divided by a common language'. Below that; Germany, Australia and the Netherlands account for between 20 and 100 total page-views each. Minor players include Italy, Russia, Singapore, Denmark, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Finland, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, Pakistan, Bermuda, Latvia and Lithuania. (Ignore the 'Visitors by Country' box as that's only been there a few days).

The single biggest browser used by visitors is Firefox (64%), which is appropriate enough given that every word has been typed in the very same.  11% use Internet Explorer, 9% Google Chrome, 6% Safari and 4% Opera.  Around 5% use various mobile devices or proxies (note that stats do not equal 100% due to rounding).

Similarly, Windows dominates the users by operating system, with a commanding 83% of machines used to access ITM running it.  Macintosh systems are as low as 9%, whilst iPhones, Linux and other Unix are drawn on 2% each. A few hits have been registered as iPad, Samsung or Android, which matches the smartphone browser data in the last paragraph.

Oddly enough the average reader therefore uses exactly the same computer equipment as myself, which could be interpreted as a sign that in some way I am reaching my target audience.

The ten most popular posts, by page-views, are: 
1. What Happened in Hungary: Day One (109)
2. Transportation (68)
3. The River Itchen (Part 1) (51)
4. Neglected Composers #1 (49)
5. What Happened in Hungary: Day Three Part Two (40)
6. My Hovercraft is Full of Eels (39)
7. Neglected Composers #2 (35)
-  Some Cartographic Esoterica (35)
9. On Arrangement (31)
-  Why Violists Rule the World (31)


The number of posts on the site, including this one, is currently 44. This works out at a mean average of 45.45 recurring reads per post. It also means that I'm posting on average almost exactly once a week, as I reckon to have been away from any opportunity to blog for about 7 weeks this year.

By far the most interesting data is on what brought people here in the first place. A sizable number are from the 'adverts' I put on my Facebook page announcing significant posts, but the rest have followed links from other blogs or search engines.  A link from the A History of the World in 100 Objects site listing blogs that mention the programme has delivered a few hits.  The Young Composers forum and Diamond Geezer's blog also generate noteworthy percentages, but in all these cases the content of the link is usually clear. When it isn't, there are some fascinatingly arcane searches that result in a hit. Three people have searched for the Detritus Review, a blog I link to in the sidebar but have never yet mentioned in a post.  'Plane crash intio a27 viaduct near fareham [sic]'; 'sea traffic' and '19th century southhampton oil landscape [also sic]' have no obvious connection to any of the content here, other than that the words appear in disparate places within a year's output.  Some traffic comes from pictures that appear in image search results.  And happily, a few have typed inthemistsblog.blogspot.com into their address bar and come here directly and intentionally.

I never expect In The Mists to become a massively popular and influential blog, and certainly not in its first year, so I'm quite satisfied at having a small but regular stream of visitors reading what is, after all, rather niche content.  Looking toward the next year, I intend to keep the subject matter roughly similar, with perhaps a little more emphasis on revealing the mechanics of writing music.  There will be regular updates on my biggest composition project to date (it involves choirs, and at least two guaranteed performances) following the entire process of creating the piece.  It would be heartening to see another couple of followers join Marius over there on the right sidebar.  Whatever happens, we shall endeavour to continue to provide interesting and enlightening pieces for the world.