background posts

Filed under: Design, Utilities, Macintosh

Loginox: easy way to change your Mac's login image

by Jay Hathaway May 15th 2009

Changing a desktop image on a Mac is no big thing. You can open System Preferences from the Apple menu or the Applications directory, or you can go straight to the desktop prefpane by right-clicking on your desktop. Changing the picture you see when you log in should be just as easy, but it's not. If you want to learn the Terminal commands to do it, then more power to you. For the average user, there's Loginox.

Loginox is an app with a simple drag-and-drop interface for swapping out your login image. That's literally all it does, but that's definitely enough. The only way it could work better is if the developers rewrote it as a prefpane, or if Apple decided to incorporate it into the existing desktop/screensaver settings.

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: background, desktop, image, login, loginox, os x, OsX

Filed under: Design, Utilities, Web services, Web

Free Twitter Designer offers custom Twitter backgrounds

by Jay Hathaway Feb 23rd 2009

If you've been on Twitter for a while, you've probably seen someone with an elaborate background that's designed to work around the text elements of the Twitter layout. Maybe it's got a photo and some contact information on the side, or maybe it just frames the main text field in some creative way. When you want to make your own, though, how do you work around the layout and get the spacing right? That's where Free Twitter Designer comes in.

It's a web-based image editor that lets you view the basic layout of a Twitter page transparently, so you can figure out where to position any photos or text you want to add. You can import photos into Free Twitter Designer, and add some predesigned shapes, shadow or blur effects to your design. The text tool has a handful of different fonts to choose from, and of course you can customize the colors. While I take issue with a site that claims to produce the same results as a professional designer -- pay your designers well, guys! -- it's a simple way to get around some of the challenges of making a Twitter background.

Tags: background, free-twitter-designer, image-editing, twitter, wallpaper

Filed under: Design, Productivity, Web services

Get help making tiled backgrounds for your website

by Joey Celis Jul 13th 2008

If you ever wanted to make a tiled background pattern for your desktop or website but lacked the design expertise to create one, bgpatterns has you covered.

The site is very straight forward and easy to use. Start off by selecting the foreground and background color for your design, followed by the texture of your canvas. Once you have that dialed in you're ready for the next step which is selecting the image you want tiled.

After you've selected your image click the "apply background" link and the site's background will change so you can see if you like your design. If you're satisfied with the results you're free to download it or save it to your "My patterns" account.

While bgpatterns offers a number of stock images, it does lacks the option to upload your own custom image. Hopefully the developers will add this option in the future as the selection of images are rather "clip artish".

So if you've been looking at making a skull themed background for your MySpace page bgpatterns is ready for you!

Tags: background, images, website design, WebsiteDesign

Filed under: Design

HDRwalls: stunning wallpaper for your computer or portable

by Todd Ritter Feb 1st 2008

HDRwalls offers a welcome change from hum-drum single color desktop backgrounds or the limited selection of built-in OS wallpapers. They currently have about 500 High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos in resolutions ranging from 800x600 to 1920x1200. They also provide sizes for iPod Touch, PSP, Blackberry, and iPhone.

HDR photography is the result of increasing the dynamic range of a photo through tone mapping and combining multiple exposures. The HDR group on Flickr has great examples and offers tips to create your own HDR images (and maybe even use them as desktop backgrounds).

[Thanks Michael!]

Tags: background, desktop, hdr, photography, wallpaper

Filed under: Design, Fun, Photo, Windows, Microsoft

Windows Vista wallpapers

by Jordan Running Nov 27th 2006

A blogger called Brajeshwar has posted what looks like a complete set of wallpapers from Windows Vista. Whether they're all really from Vista or not, they're all gorgeous and, if you like greens and nature themes, are well worth the download. You can browse the set on Flickr or download zipped packs on Brajeshwar's blog. You can go forth and decorate, or you can check out a small sampling after the jump.

Tags: background, desktoip, microsoft, nature, vista, wallpaper, windows

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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