Backgrounds and Textures
This lists, categorically, backgrounds and textures collections
that I use or consider to be of some quality. When possible, I prefer
listing collections where the backgrounds are made by the authors of
the websites, rather than random, large, and anonymous collections
of backgrounds that probably belong to someone else.
Remember, the people who go through the trouble of making backgrounds
and then, God knows why, giving them away for free, deserve a little
credit. So make sure, before you forget, to always link back to their
pages whenever you use one of their backgrounds. I've personally made
a sources page as a reminder to myself.
It's an easy way to keep tabs on where you got everything from, should
you ever want to go back and get some more. Also NEVER, NEVER make a
background collection of your own using a background made by someone
else. They can make their own archive of their work, thank you very
much.
To use a background, save the image from the artist's webpage into
YOUR OWN homepage directory, so that you can use it without draining
on the artist's webserver.
Finally, if you're shopping for backgrounds, you might like some tips
on Color and Images, which I have links
to on my good html page. One site even has instructions for making
seamless backgrounds.
Consciously Pretty
Windy's Design Studio
I can only stand to have a link to ONE page where the backgrounds
are especially cute or "feminine" or sweet, and this is the one. It's
less disgustingly sugary than most, and by golly, Windy actually does
make an effort to create high quality and palatable images.
Basic
Just 10 basics ought to do.
- Free Images has a
surprisingly well-chosen archive
of buttons, bars, and other images, which you can even change the
colors for.
- Ender-Design's Realm Graphics has
the old standards
which you see in many anonymous collections, and which are only a
little more creative than the boring Netscape backgrounds. However,
the clear organization on this site makes it worth the link.
- I list
The Pub Man's
spare but nice collection of home-made backgrounds to remind you
not to overlook the small stuff while trying to sift through all
the garbage you find on the net, and to guilt you once again into
realizing the trouble these nice-hearted folks go through, so that
you'll bloody give them a link like they deserve.
-
Pam Bytes has a refined, clean style.
- The Enchantress
has a large collection of varied border sets and backgrounds, both
feminine and otherwise, plus helpful graphics tips.
-
Background City
is where I got my cool caves texture.
- The peacock texture is among the notable images available at
Oscar's Backgrounds.
- Though quite strikingly pretty,
Heidi's Hyper Backgrounds
are, as the author says, less than subtle.
-
Julianne's Textures are variations of patterns in many colors.
-
Media Links
has an archive wherein the individual creators of the graphics are
identified!
Artistic
The logos are just for me to remember and use when I put their
backgrounds on whatever page within my site. Yes, I am being lazy
about aligning them.
- I would describe Jenn's
Get a Byte
archive as a collection of sketchy, silky, enchanting images.
- Roger Hamstra's
Silk Purse Graphics
features fractal and other images.
-
Barbara Durham most notably offers floral and medieval designs,
plus great other stuff like tips and fonts.
-
Dr. Zeus's Textures
are made rather skillfully from his nature photos.
-
Pegasus' textures are perfectly seamless and perfectly lovely.
- Moyra's Web Jewels
are indeed a treasure, and so is her story of the
"11th Commandment".
- Infinite Fish
is a high-quality graphics designer with great images.
- The watercolor collection, especially, makes
Patti's Place
outstanding, and her homepage in general has good design tools and
tips.
-
Jelane's free graphics are an interesting variety of graphic sets
called "families".
-
Phyllis has many embossed backgrounds, and is notable for her
Zodiac and nature tiles.
- Benedira's
WebWorx has some nice sets, as well as "loose graphics".
Animations
Like the Pretty category, I can only stand to list ONE page with
animations on it, because I think that animations are way over-used
on the web anyway.
Luree's Animations are cute, and her backgrounds are quite
out-of-the-ordinary.
3D
Actually, you know, any kind of textured background is
a little bit 3D, if it gives you the impression of rough paper,
bumpy rocks, carved designs, etc. I will try to place very
3D collections here.
- 3D Glasses
is a website where you can actually use those red-green 3D glasses
to view the background.
- Rowdy's RamPage
has a couple of collections of mostly high contrast or 3D
textures.
- Graphics Machine
contains interesting 3D images, but I don't believe they're meant
to be tiling, seamless backgrounds.
-
Dr. Ozone has 3D images as well as backgrounds.
- The 3D cafe
has some collection links and other resources.
High Contrast
Please note--"high contrast" usually means it's difficult to read
text on top of it. Believe it or not, there ARE people (in fact,
virtually everybody) whose computer monitors show colors quite
differently from yours, or have strange brightness and contrast
levels. This could seriously affect the way your page looks and
reads.
However, since a lot of really cool images and backgrounds are too
beautiful to resist, I will list these collections anyway and just
advise you to use the HTML trick of putting your text within a table,
with or without a border, and then defining an easily readable
background color for each table cell; Infinite Fish has made a
table background color example of this trick.
-
McTurner's textures are so good they very much tempted me into
sacrificing readability for beauty on my webpages.
- Flux's Texture Land!
contains all that oddball and semi-grotesque stuff for you wild ones
out there.
- Brain Soup's
archive is highly quirky, but perhaps you'd like to see Parabola's
version of
the example page.
- Being Seen Graphics
has backgrounds, as well as buttons and balls.
- Michael Johnson's
Midnight Hour
links to his many backgrounds, and his helpful HTML resources.
-
Jay's Original Backgrounds are very colorful and high-contrast.
This background was made by me.
Asian Girl Home
htnguyen@rmwc.edu
© Huong Nguyen 1998