A big thank you to Austin

Petrie. · **on:** July 24, 2009, 07:16:43 AM

He went and made us a better LBT background than the one we had. I like what I see, and I'm grateful for his abilities with photoshop and image editing programs.

Thank you very much Austin (lbtlover).

Malte279 · **Reply #1 on:** July 24, 2009, 08:12:35 AM

Aye, this looks good indeed. It is a great help to have someone so handy with picture editing programs on the Gang of Five

Cancerian Tiger · **Reply #2 on:** July 24, 2009, 08:51:17 AM

It does look nice

. A big thanks to Landbeforetimelover indeed!

Amaranthine · **Reply #3 on:** July 24, 2009, 09:36:01 AM

Wow, very nice. I liked the other one too, but this is good also.

Littlefoot Fan · **Reply #4 on:** July 24, 2009, 09:57:08 AM

Looks really good! I like how it just shows the ground Littlefoot is walking on and no visible background. Good work Austin

Caustizer · **Reply #5 on:** July 24, 2009, 10:02:45 AM

Awesome background.

lbt/cty_lover · **Reply #6 on:** July 24, 2009, 10:36:32 AM

Wow. I went on the forum today and I went, "Whoa! New background!" It is an awesome background.

Thanks to LBTLover!

Kor · **Reply #7 on:** July 24, 2009, 10:55:37 AM

I thought it was a new background, but wasn't sure. I only see littlefoot really and what may be the ground he is on. I keep the monitor dark often, except when I'm playing a pc video game, so can't see the background details much usually.

Petrie. · **Reply #8 on:** July 24, 2009, 10:56:22 AM

Better quality image has been put up...I was sent the low-quality one.

NOw it looks even better yet.

Lillefot · **Reply #9 on:** July 24, 2009, 11:05:27 AM

I admit, I gasped when I logged on here just now!
AWESOME! Truly marvelous!
I like it alot!
Extraordinary work Austin! Very well done!

Petrie. · **Reply #10 on:** July 24, 2009, 04:01:39 PM

I'm on a really good computer with a really good 19 inch monitor...everything looks so gooood.

My laptop sucks.

Jasper · **Reply #11 on:** July 24, 2009, 04:25:03 PM

It's a very nice background!

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #12 on:** July 24, 2009, 07:06:43 PM

I'm glad y'all like it. It took over an hour to make, but that's because I was experimenting a lot. If I had just done it without messing around I could have gotten it done in half that time.

I'm still experimenting with the background because I'm not 100% satisfied with the results. To tell you the truth, even after I make and publish something I usually edit it a couple more times. I can't ever seem to get it perfect the first time.

I think this background has much more potential.

Of course you have to remember I have to balance functionality with good looks. I could make this background KICK A$$, but it would be at least 1mb if not 2mb. That's unacceptable. It would take forever to load. It all has to do with being universal for all screen sizes and resolutions. This current background will be usable on a 15" monitor running a 1024x768 resolution all the way up to a 47" monitor with a 2560x1600 resolution. Widescreen, Regular, and UltraWidescreen monitors included of course.

Petrie. · **Reply #13 on:** July 24, 2009, 10:04:57 PM

Latest version of the background up...now Littlefoot is gazing at something at least...stars.

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #14 on:** July 24, 2009, 11:31:30 PM

In case you're wondering, I used the following images to make the background:

Lots of blending was used to make it look like they all belonged together, and a shadow was added so it looked like Littlefoot was actually standing on the grass. I used an absolute removal technique to get the Littlefoot image out of the background 100%. I might make a tutorial on how I made this background if anyone's interested. It would be a big download though. The video file would be pretty long.......

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #15 on:** July 25, 2009, 05:06:53 AM

I thought I should explain why a new background image was needed. If you can all remember the old background image, it was rather large. It even spewed off the sides of my 21.5" ultra widescreen monitor.

If a background image is say 1000x1000 pixels, it will repeat 4 times on a resolution of 2000x2000 pixels. Remember that this is based on area. Repeating backgrounds do NOT look good. The solution? Make a HUGE background image. The problem with that is people with smaller resolutions will see only part of the image. There is such a variation in screen size nowadays it's almost impossible to make things universal.

There is another thing you can do though. You can do what I did when I made this background image. This is the original background image itself:

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e294/mr3...bgwithstars.jpg

Probably not what you were expecting huh? There's a lot of the background image that you can't see. If we position this HUGE background image so that it's on the bottom left corner of the screen and doesn't repeat, it will look good on any sized resolution up to the amount of pixles in the image (in this case 2560x1600).

The old background image didn't work because part of the leaf was always cut off unless you had a 28" monitor or above. On a 15" non widescreen monitor at it's maximum resolution you couldn't even see the leaf!

But not to worry. There is a new solution to this problem. It has plagued web designers since the days of image backgrounds, but it hasn't been such an issue until recently. Most people didn't have these huge monitors and such. CSS3, which is still unsupported by all browsers has a background stretch option. The image will automatically fill 100% of the screen regardless of your screen size or resolution. Unfortunately it will take several years for this to be fully supported in all browsers. Because of this, a new background image had to be made.

I hope I've explained this so you can understand. If you have any questions regarding web design and the application of image backgrounds, please let me know.

Malte279 · **Reply #16 on:** July 25, 2009, 05:21:36 AM

The stars make another improvement to an already good work. The picture works really well as most of it is black so it does not distract you from reading the text. Without the stars the upper part of the background was a little empty, so the addition of the stars seems to complete the image without providing any notable distraction. Great job indeed

Mornai · **Reply #17 on:** July 26, 2009, 08:10:31 PM

Awesome new background, . Thanks for taking the time to make this, it's really great.

action9000 · **Reply #18 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:54:12 PM

We likey (me and mumbling

)

It's nice that it will fit on all resolutions now!