Untitled inbox collage #1

First, I took screenshots of emails and newsletter content, as well as some other bits and bobs:

• Various substacks and blogs, including Noahpinion, House Inhabit, and Works in Progress
• Marketing emails and web content from The Baffler, ARTFORUM, the Brooklyn Museum, and Verso books
• The short story "The Gourmet," by Kazuo Ishiguro, at Granta
• Miscellaneous other marketing and transactional emails, including a data privacy opt-out notification
• The output of a terribly unhelpful customer service AI chatbot

Then I wrote a python script to separate text from background in a particular image

import cv2
import numpy as np
import os
import argparse

def split_text_background(image_path, output_dir):
  os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)

  image = cv2.imread(image_path, cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)

  if image is None:
      print(f"Error: Could not open image at {image_path}")
      return

  if image.shape[2] == 3:  # If only BGR channels exist
      image = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2BGRA)

  gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)

  _, text_mask = cv2.threshold(gray, 200, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)

  text_only = np.zeros_like(image, dtype=np.uint8)
  text_only[:, :, 0:3] = image[:, :, 0:3]
  text_only[:, :, 3] = text_mask

  background_only = image.copy()
  background_only[:, :, 3] = cv2.bitwise_not(text_mask)

  base_name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(image_path))[0]
  background_output_path = os.path.join(output_dir, f"{base_name}_background.png") 
  text_output_path = os.path.join(output_dir, f"{base_name}_text.png") 

  cv2.imwrite(background_output_path, background_only)
  cv2.imwrite(text_output_path, text_only)

  print(f"✅ Background extracted and saved to: {background_output_path}")
  print(f"✅ Text extracted and saved to: {text_output_path}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Split text and background from an image while preserving transparency.")
  parser.add_argument("image_path", help="Path to the input image")
  parser.add_argument("-o", "--output", default=".", help="Output directory (default: current directory)")

  args = parser.parse_args()

  split_text_background(args.image_path, args.output)

After creating these text masks the hard way, I got to work in Figma stitching it all together.