How do I choose a background image?

originally contributed by: Saint Jimmy

A good background image should fill your entire page. A good way to test this is by opening the image to its full size and see if it covers your entire screen (or larger!). Most computer monitors use 1024x768 resolution but many larger resolutions are becoming popular. This means your image should be about 1024 pixels x 768 pixels. A smaller image, by default, will begin to repeat if it is too small. Some patterns, textures and images are made to do this and can be very small. However, most images look horrible when tiled and it should be avoided. You can resize an image using any photo editing software you can find but stretching a picture too big will lead to a loss in quality and you may decide you don't want to use that image at all. Also keep in mind that just because your background image i the correct size and is a nice image does not mean it looks good as a background. A background should never take away from the content of your webpage. To add a background image to your site the first thing you should do is Make sure you know the location of your image on the internet. You can not host the image from your home computer, you must upload it.