I got a new phone and had to play around with the new features. One of the things this phone can do is put an image in the screen background. Unfortunately, the meters, menu text and clock don't show up very well against that sort of background.

So I created a wallpaper image with cutouts for these graphic elements. This was a long and involved process of successive approximation. I started with a reference grid, uploaded it to the phone and then cut out rectangles for the highlights by comparing the grid on the phone to the one on my computer. After that, I painstakingly cut out the approximate size of the elements pixel-by-pixel. Then I expanded and blurred it (to give an anti-aliasing effect) and merged it on top of my desired background (one of my photos in this case).

I'm putting the results of my labor online here to save others the time & trouble. If you like my background, you can download my image directly to your phone by entering it's URL into your phone. Or to make your own background, you can start from my multi-layered source image. This is a Gimp image file. The Gimp is a really nice, free, photoshop-equivalent program. By using the gimp and it's layer controls, you can substitute your own image or add or remove various different cutouts. Don't forget to sync the color scheme of the phone (one of the display settings) with your image choice.

Unfortunately, putting nice quality photographs on your tiny little cellphone screen is a sort of depressing experience. No matter how much you tweak them, the little crappy screen is always going to make them look awful.

If you find this useful, please feel free to drop me a line.