Background Images
I feel like it's 1996 on Geocities, but does anybody have any good recommendations for sites that offer free background images for the purpose of tiled repeating? By good I mean:
* Won't create visable edge lines
* Professionally subtle textures
* Not distracting cartoons like Precious Moments
* etc (you know what I mean)
Especially those first two: no edge lines when tiled, and just subtle and non-distracting. Stuff that you don't necessarily design around but can throw in as an afterthought (if the color schemes match) just to break up the solid colors.
I've done the standard Google search but mostly come up with ameture crap. Any good ones you guys recommend?
timjpriebe posted this at 18:48 — 15th June 2005.
He has: 2,667 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
I normally just make my own. Paint Shop Pro has an option for generating the type of tiled images you're talking about. It takes a bit of practice to make decent ones.
I've used them on the cloud background on tandswebdesign.com and the mountain title background on angelfiregetaway.com
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
Megan posted this at 19:03 — 15th June 2005.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I take it you're using it for actual background for text and not a frame background (like I did on my site). Honestly, I've never seen that look good (no offense to Tim!). I do happen to like the outder border tile idea, and I was able to find some good patterns but ended up going with my own basic creation.
1996 on Geocities. Throwback to my first site
Oh the memories... I had some awful tiled backgrounds on there!
Megan
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timjpriebe posted this at 19:11 — 15th June 2005.
He has: 2,667 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
None taken. We're all entitled to our opinion, of course. I would agree in that I've rarely seen it look good. In those two sites I used it on, only one has it as a background image behind the text of the page. And on that one, I liked it, but was very wary of using it because of how bad background images generally look. So I double checked it with a few different people (ie "normal" surfers and graphic designers) and they thought it looked fine. So I used it.
Long story short... Like Megan implied, I would be very careful when using tiled background images.
I had a terrible Geocities page in 1996 as well! I remember pulling an all-nighter in college one night to set it up. Glad they finally pulled that atrocity down.
Tim
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
Megan posted this at 19:10 — 15th June 2005.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Here's a good site: http://www.k10k.net/frames.aspx?section=patterns You'd have to play with the contrast to get them to work with text on top though.
Megan
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fifeclub posted this at 19:53 — 15th June 2005.
He has: 688 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
Actually I was thinking of "surrounding areas" and not necessarily behind main content text. But I still like to keep things subtle. That link was pretty nice. 90% grandma's doilies and grandpa's ties, but there were over a dozen nice ones in there.
Talk about subtle and non distracting, here are two I grabbed. You need to squint just to see that they're not solid colors, but they tile very nicely.
[IMG]http://www.k10k.net/images/pixelpatterns/tiles/pat_20030818150705.gif [/IMG]
Thanks for the link, and any future links others may post after this.
I may need to adjust the colors to what I need.
Dragon of Ice posted this at 00:49 — 16th June 2005.
He has: 578 posts
Joined: Jun 2004
http://squidfingers.com/patterns/
So many, so good! Cameron Moll (sp?/name?) used one on his site. He's fairly famous.
demonhale posted this at 04:07 — 17th June 2005.
He has: 3,278 posts
Joined: May 2005
I prefer to do my own with PSP, but your Link was very useful... Thanks Man... I guess I can get inspiration from these...
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