{"id":1676,"date":"2023-11-29T13:31:43","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T18:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/?p=1676"},"modified":"2023-11-29T14:26:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T19:26:03","slug":"making-a-screen-background-from-a-photomicrograph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/2023\/11\/29\/making-a-screen-background-from-a-photomicrograph\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a screen background from a photomicrograph"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things that drew me to pathology was the aesthetics of histology. I find microscopic images fascinating and beautiful.\u00a0 As a hobby, I like to make screen backgrounds from photomicrographs by turning them in to more abstract images.\u00a0 Here’s one simple way I do it.\u00a0 I’m going to use only two free and open source software tools:\u00a0 GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program, www.gimp.org) and Blender (www.blender.org).\u00a0 Both run on Linux, Windows, and Macs.<\/p>\n

First, find a photomicrograph that is a little unusual and a little more abstract than ones showing normal architecture (though normal architecture can also be very pretty).\u00a0 For instance, here’s a Gram stain of a vegetation in a case of tricuspid bacterial endocarditis.\u00a0 I chose it because I like blues:<\/p>\n

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The bacterial clusters are in blue, cellular nuclei are purple and yellow, and fibrin strands are light blue. It’s a little dark.\u00a0 I haven’t done any white balancing or contrast stretching, but that’s good for my purposes since I like dark themes for my computer screen.\u00a0 You can always lighten it up or stretch contrast in GIMP or Photoshop or whatever if you want.<\/p>\n

Next, I’ll open a 3D modeling program, such as Blender, and I’ll map the image onto a surface:<\/p>\n

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Now, I’ll add a so-called “displacement map” to it, which causes the surface to rise or fall depending on the color or brightness.<\/p>\n

Before attaching the displacement map node in Blender:<\/p>\n

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After:<\/p>\n

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Now, I’ll add a light at a slight angle to throw some shadows:<\/p>\n

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And here’s the final image.\u00a0 As always, double click or right click to see the big version (depending on your browser and OS):<\/p>\n

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And as a screen background:<\/p>\n

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There’s a learning curve with using Blender, of course, but given that, it only takes a few minutes once you learn to use it.<\/p>\n

If you don’t like blues, you can play with the color map.\u00a0 \u00a0For instance, using the “map colors” tool in GIMP, I mapped the blues to greens and the greys to blues, which makes it look a little like an aerial map of a Louisiana swamp, with individual bacterial colonies being individual trees and bushes:<\/p>\n

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One of the things that drew me to pathology was the aesthetics of histology. I find microscopic images fascinating and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,1],"tags":[56,27,25,26],"class_list":["post-1676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photomicrographs","category-uncategorized","tag-histology","tag-image-processing","tag-microscopy","tag-photomicrography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}