On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 10:46 AM Máirín Duffy <duffy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On 17. 04. 20 16:07, Kamil Paral wrote: > > https://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2018/03/06/fedora-28s-desktop-background-design/ > > > > I am sad we haven't followed the pattern. (However I don't know the reasoning > > for stopping that.) > > That's not true, we didn't stop the pattern. F32 is G for Goffman. F was Fresnel. E was Elion. So on. If you dig through the tickets you'll fimd the inspiration. Everyone's an art critic. I spent some effort building a technical mindset, dispensing with aesthetic, in my line of work in color management and color science. "There is no such thing as bad colors" and "art isn't my thing, all I care about is accuracy" and so on. And then I taught a masters level class in photography at the School of Visual Arts - where I had to become a critic, at a technical level. The class was 'color management and printing'. I learned at least as much as I taught. One of the early assignments, which I actually didn't figure out for the first year, was to go look at art. Why are the successes considered successful? Yeah you can read about that to some degree, but you really have to look at it, and mimic it. You only really understand by trying to replicate those successes. And you pretty much have to do what others have done before you, because they're that successful and basic, and then you can innovate and incorporate your own style. I'm no art history amateur let alone expert, so I don't know all the reasons why it's familiar. But I see the intentional use of different kinds of dithering as art. These techniques have a long history in both analog and digital image reproduction. I see the traditional AM halftoning from various print forms, found in newspapers, magazines, comic books, packaging, and it exists for its tolerance to the mechanical limitations of those processes. The apparent stochastic (FM screening) also leverages noise as the dithering approach, resulting in the "crushed glass" kind of look, especially in the dark to light gradients. I think it's a successful blending of these class dithering techniques that you don't find on pixel displays. But to good effect, in particular on crap low bit depth panels where smooth gradients of short distance readily will show posterization where none exists in the digital file. The noise masks the limitations of the panel. That's the whole point of dithering. I think it's fantastic. I have the benefit of looking at the background on a crap laptop display as well as a rather nice NEC self-calibrating display suitable for medical imaging. And this background looks good to me on both displays. That's non-trivial to achieve, there are always compromises. It's not really possible to make smooth gradients of short distances on low end panels, of course some noise is necessary. The negatives come from people used to a particular aesthetic, and just don't realize what they're looking at. And 20 years ago I'd put myself into that category. Maybe the F32 background art is too sophisticated. But then I immediately have to refuse that premise because I think Fedora deserves the sophisticated, and that it's better to just consider the negative comments innocently ignorant. Folks just don't know what they're looking at. Anyway, I'm totally guessing. I have no actual insight to the development process of the F32 default background. It'd be interesting to read about the inspiration, process, and iterations involved in combining the aesthetic and the technical. I think people would be surprised to discover the things they don't like about it are perhaps more tied to technical decisions that were then taken advantage of by the chosen aesthetic. Also, classic art: evoking an emotional response in the viewer. :-D In this sense, the art is perhaps one of Fedora's most successful! -- Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
