Hi rgnau81,
What I would suggest doing is creating a background image that you can either "fade from" or "fade to". I.E., have a background image that has perhaps the colour blue in it (that you created in Photoshop) and then you can simply use the following CSS code:
Code:
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
body { background: #003366 url(mybackground.jpg) no-repeat 0 0; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Some test text</h1>
</body>
</html>
This code will create a solid blue background (#003366) with your image (mybackground.jpg) placed in the top left corner of the page and will not be repeated. However, what you could also do is place the image in the middle of the page (which works well for background images that are not particularly wide). To do this simply replace the CSS with:
Code:
<style type="text/css">body { background: #003366 url(mybackground.jpg) no-repeat 50% 0%; }</style>
This will place the image (background) 50% in the middle of the page (horizontal aligment). So if the user's browser window is wider than the graphic, you will then have your image bang in the middle, and the solid blue colour 'padding' around it.
Hope this helps answer your question a little bit. And also, the only supported image formats as background images are:
.gif, .jpg, .png, .bmp (sugget not using bitmaps though - not exactly web friendly!)
To save your file as a web file format, in photoshop select:
File > Save For Web
Or press the keyboard keys (Windows):
CTRL + ALT + S
You will then be able to preview the quality of the output image and save the file as either of the formats listed above
.