Web Design: Photographic Background

If I were told to make a list of web design trends I love, there would be really few itens. Wood, glowing stuff and other things... and most definately, photographic backgrounds!

I even had a personal project back a few years agora, but it never went online. Here are a few websites that we get to see this awesome trend... most of them are flash sites, because when you have a photo background, it's important that it will respond to your resolution... otherwise, if you have a 1280x1024 back photo, it will lose a lot of information in 1024x768.

Do you guys know any other cool sites like these? Or even cool tutorials on how to do it? If so, leave a comment! Enjoy! ;)





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Hello, everyone! I'm Paulo, a 24 years old designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil. I work as a webdesigner since 2006, but websites and blogs have been a hobbie for me since 1999. At Abduzeedo, I try to bring only the hot stuff for you guys... and hope that all of you enjoy my posts! Cheers! *Now on Twitter.

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another good usage of fullscreen web site;

http://www.carmikliyapi.com

armagan's picture
armagan (not verified) 09/04/2008

Very good collection, thanks!

Min Thu's picture
Min Thu (not verified) 08/17/2008

great work. congratulations. best: #3 (the blue)...pure inspiration.

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous (not verified) 08/15/2008

These are great selections. I particularly like Signal 7.

51255designs's picture
51255designs (not verified) 08/14/2008

Here's how to do this in CSS if anyone's interested.

http://css-tricks.com/how-to-resizeable-background-image/

Raph's picture
Raph (not verified) 08/12/2008

Nice post! I like the concept of using a large background image very much! Although I'm not a flash supporter... With a css based site it's a bit more difficult but with the help of some javascript a lot can be done!

Thomas 's picture
Thomas (not verified) 08/09/2008

Both thenorthface.com and jansport.com have recently relauched with photographic background sites. The scaling technique for different resolutions and even browser window resizing is really nice.

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous (not verified) 08/08/2008

I also love this trend. great selections in your post!
i know that the H&M website also does this: www.hm.com

Francisco's picture
Francisco 08/08/2008

Very Nice! Very Creative Websites.. I think it will take month's to finish one of those..

Busby SEO Challenge's picture
Busby SEO Challenge (not verified) 08/08/2008

Nie bg photo makes sites looks hot and its pretty easy way to make them look nice)

theq's picture
theq (not verified) 08/08/2008

Hi!

One of my fav trends. I don't know tuts, but there are only a few specialities for this style. At publishing set the flash content to 100% width/height, set the Stage.align to "TL" (for example - to align the origo at top-left), set the background photo's width to Stage.width, and to constrain proportions set the other dimension to the resized dimensions _x/yscale. Done:) If needed, i'll add a "site" template to Flashden.

My latest site (at the company i work) based on this style was Retro jeans, visit it at http://www.retrojeans.com

fcuk's picture
fcuk (not verified) 08/08/2008

i've done a site a year ago or so with a photographic background: www.neliamusic.de/site
cheers!

cykma's picture
cykma (not verified) 08/08/2008

Amazing list! The hardest in this art is to do it in XHTML/CSS: it's easier in Flash because it fits to your screen, but in usual ways...

pickupjojo's picture
pickupjojo (not verified) 08/08/2008

here's my website with photo-bg i hope u'll enjoy it! :D

http://www.luckyday.it

zhennino's picture
zhennino (not verified) 08/07/2008

Ruby Tuesday's uses this new trend.
Looks great, and i love their "loader" for the background image too.

http://www.rubytuesday.com/agreenruby/

I would love some how-to's also regarding this technique.

sphereboy's picture
sphereboy (not verified) 08/07/2008

really good links thanks, its a shame there arent more websites like this that arent using flash. id like to see how theyd turn out

neil's picture
neil (not verified) 08/07/2008

Great post. I love photographic backgrounds too. Here's a couple more - these are all photography sites so in a way they are backgrounds as well as main content;

http://www.letstakepictures.info/index.php

http://www.cake-factory.com/#/home/

http://www.brook-pifer.com/

Jennifer's picture
Jennifer (not verified) 08/07/2008

These sites are amazing. Does anyone know where you can find a tutorial on how to build a site such as these?

David's picture
David (not verified) 08/07/2008

Here´s another site with great use of photographic background
http://www.phillipsdepury.com/

Camilo Oliveira's picture
Camilo Oliveira (not verified) 08/07/2008

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