Say you would like to make a website made in say tables with background pics to create the entire layout of the site, how would you go about actually DESIGNING the graphics and making everything blend in seamlessly. I have been having a lot of trouble actually coming up with smooth flowing graphics that dont detract from the usability aspects yet still looks good! Im not sure if this would be the right section or maybe it should be in the graphics but its got aspects of both.

Hello,

as I understood it, you've got two different questions.
1. What kind of graphics to use, that are good but yet smooth enough to blend in and count as background. We're talking easy on the eyes, but beautiful. Well, there are tons of advice to give there and I'm probably not the divine guru on the subject. If you want to see, what the gurus do, have a look at the Css Zen Garden. You might also want to consider searching the forums and how-tos on design guidelines. Earlies today somebody posted a link to this website, a color scheme generator.

2. I can say more about the second point. You talked about fitting graphics together in tables, so that it works together nicely. This can be tedious work of course, especially, if we're talking backwards compatibility.
If you want to do it with tables (CSS can enhance the results and make it easier for you, but as far as my experience goes, you will have troubles making it look the same in any common browser).
Tables for layout purposes are deprecated, but have their advantages.
Applications like Photoshop and ImageReady help a lot with building these tables. If you don't use a WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, you should consider using one for this, because it's difficult to do abstract.
You should think about, who your users are going to be. If they are likely to be up-to-date kids, then you should definitively go CSS instead of table layout.

Ask back, I'm not going to write an essay, when I'm not sure I got your point…

Ruben

If you really want to start from scratch and use a graphic software such as Photoshop. Once you have your graphics, you can then worry about the layout. Dreamware can probably solve the layout problem.

Well, I don't know if you're using plain html or what, but you can do a lot by using CSS, if you don't use it yet, sorry if you use it and think that this is a lame suggestion.. Once you know/learn CSS you can create really good layouts with html and maybe even some javascript, but not to much, just for what is necessary. Just my two cents..

Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
Photoshop + Dreamweaver
How many more times do I have to say it

Ky1e, on what you are doing, the thing that you will earn is a warning or perhaps a ban.. he is asking a question on design and not on what software to use.. plus you are turning your post into a spam..

just my few cents though..

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@Demonhawk

there are a lot of ways to do your question.. it is also possible to create a stunning website without graphics and make it look and feel as if the whole site is heavy on graphics..

these of course takes time to build and you will need to try more on CSS and some javascript perhaps.. Just avoid IE's interpretation of javascript and CSS.. they are not standard anyway..

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Furthermore Ky1e, not all people are rich like you and not all can buy this kind of Expensive Software, but he might use Trial versions for some time to finish the layout, but as mentioned his question was a bit different. :S

One of the trial users is me.. I got a trial Photoshop C2 full edition.. when the trial expires.. I use a restore CD.. It is annoying but the restore CD makes my life easier.. No choice anyway.. cant give the money to buy a copy..

I already spend a good deal of cash for M$ OS and Office set since I was not the only one who uses my units and not all are capable to use Fedora Core Linux..

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I only keep all data in a different drive so it wont get affected by the restore..

This was the same problem I had before. But to solve this you would first need a good graphic editor I prefer using Adobe Photoshop, even though it's expensive it's very good at making layouts and other things ouitside of site designs.

So when you got that, create like a canvas (new file) which should be as big as 800x600 any size you want as long as it's not wider than the screen. Now the very easy part to do is to "draw the webapge" with any graphicas and colors you want don't worry about the tables and how they will be placed (well maybe a little) becasue Photoshop's image slicing does the job for you.

After you finish the whole design, use the slice tool and create a box around the area that would contain content. This practice takes a while to master but it doesn't take that long. I can't fully explain it to you in detail but this is the general process.

when you're done with the slices open up ImageReady which is a seperate program and go to "Save Optimized as" which would then generate an HTML page and divide the whole image into seperate pictures. Open up an html editor (WYSIWYG) and then make the pictures that need to be written over as background. and there you have a webpage.