Need your opinion. about backgrounds for webdesign

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Posted By
naitsirch79
Jun 28, 2003
Views
558
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I have been reading up on creating backgrounds for webdesign and I have noticed it is much more important to have a well working interface than an overly busy or "eye appealing" background. In doing this I have just created some "pattern BG’s" that are a total about 45×45 pixels in total.

Just wanted to know what your opinion is and any suggestions going forward.

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P
Phosphor
Jun 28, 2003
Simple answer:

Busy backgrounds over which is placed text that I’m actually supposed to spend my time and eyestrain reading is the WORST.

If it’s really busy and color saturated it can even be annoyingly distracting when it simply surrounds a flat-color table cell containing the text.

If content is King, then eye-comfort is Queen if your goal is to have people return and/or remain on your site.
HD
hot_denim
Jun 28, 2003
You can do things things to the background to make it less dristracting; desatrure, light/darken…etc…

45×45 pixels dimension ?. That quite smaller than average; maybe the tiling pattern will look to repetative;.

For web aim at 128×128 general pattern background size.
Y
YrbkMgr
Jun 28, 2003
As with anything, it depends on what you want the user to focus on. I agree with Phosphor totally, but bear in mind, as Frank Lloyd Wright points out, "Form Follows Function".

If we look at models, spandex pants forces our eyes to one area, while a tight sweater focuses us elsewhere – so in the end, it depends on what the point of the website is.

My website is intended to focus the user on content; white background for me <shrug>.

Peace,
Tony
DM
Don McCahill
Jun 28, 2003
The only backgrounds I use today are ones that sit nicely off to the side, so that text is not forced to be read through them.

If you do need to make a background of an image, use Photoshop to reduce its opacity to 20%.
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naitsirch79
Jun 29, 2003
Thanks that is what I was thinking too I also guess that a background split into parts would be a bad idea either. So you could accomplish both. For now I agree with all of you and will probably do something on the simple. I still would like some good tutes for creating backgrounds for websites if anybody knows of any.

"Don McCahill" wrote in message:
The only backgrounds I use today are ones that sit nicely off to the side,
so that text is not forced to be read through them.
If you do need to make a background of an image, use Photoshop to reduce
its opacity to 20%.<<<<<
JM
Johnnyboy Mason
Jun 30, 2003
Look at the background I did for one of my sites: <http://www.defendwork.com/>. The individual background file is probably 200px high by 400 wide — pretty big, but it’s a very compressed jpg, so its size is like 2k or 3k. I think it’s subtle enough to just be in the background but it adds some texture to the page. It started out as a selection from a photo of river rocks, and I applied various filters and color treatments to it, flattened a copy of it, then took it to ImageReady. In IR you can make a selection out of your flattened image, then go to Filters/Other/Tile Maker, and basically experiment with the outcome. The Tile Maker filter will create a perfect background tile (inside of the white border that it creates — make an exact selection of what’s inside the white border and crop it). You can then enlarge your canvas and make several copies of that single tile (CTRL-J) and place them next to each other to see how the background would look, or you can just save it as a gif/jpg and add it to a web page real quick as a background image and view it through a browser.

Anyway, that’s what I frequently do for background images, when I need one.
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naitsirch79
Jul 1, 2003
I read this and thought it was pretty cool to test your backgrounds to see what they’ll look like. Thanks you all for your input I have learned alot and backgrounds aren’t as tricky as everything else. Well then again it depends.

ere’s a hint… If you are having trouble visualizing what your pattern
will look like once it is loaded into a background use Photoshop’s Define Pattern command. Select all of your image, then choose Edit->Define Pattern. Create a new, larger window (such as 800 pixels wide and 550 pixels tall) and select Edit->Fill. In the dialog box, for contents use: Pattern. You’ll have a chance to see your pattern. If needed, return to your original document, make changes and repeat the process until the background image is just right.<<<<

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