Many backgrounds on 'the net', and a number of those I have come up with, as well, are just not really suited to be - backgrounds. They have too much contrast, or the files are just too large. And even if you can sort of read the letters, or at all, then the background draws your eye away from the text, instead of toward it, and certainly makes the text difficult to read.

I admit, that some of the images I have here for backgrounds sort of fit that bill, but not many. Putting these few textures up, though, does somewhat serve to relieve the frustration of not being able to turn just every image into a useable background. And, in addition, textures can be used, of course, for 3-D rendering programs that can wrap up or cover over a 3-D shape with a given tiled texture. Typically, a separate bump, or relief/height map, might be included with the texture. Without it, it might be difficult to generate from the texture, itself, without clearly reworking it to establish height cues. But with simple textures, if one just converts separately to grayscale and tries that for a bump, it might be satisfactory, just at that.

It also just seems to me that the purpose of a background is to be a background, not a texture, to support and enhance text, not blot it out. So if one wants to cheat with a full-color background by keeping the text protected in tables which are colored in, at least one might think of the distracting background as a texture, really, and not a background.

Of course, the thing about textures, then, is that one can produce a full-color, hi-contrast image. No compromises. It doesn't have to be washed out. It doesn't have to be too dark. And it can be a large file; no trying to keep it down to 5, 10, or 15K. That makes textures far easier to produce than backgrounds. So again, I think a fair number of the backgrounds on 'the net', particularly those in various background collections, really are textures, not backgrounds. And you will notice a number of images I've presented as backgrounds, now presented here, in fuller contrast and color and with a larger file size as textures.

There tends to be some question as to what is a good 'size' for textures. But it will depend on the intended use. For expensive print layout, it would seem that a 500 or 1000 dot square (assuming a square) image would be the bare minimum. For something on the web, maybe something between 150 and 400 dots square might be preferable.

There was some question as to whether to include textures and other assorted images as visual links if related to each other. It means all the images have to load. But instead of placeholders, it was decided to use these, as on the CD, because even for low bandwidth connections, the links load below the page and one has to scroll down to see them.