Shop Background

[laceew45]

My friend is making shop backgrounds and she wanted my help but I couldn't help her. This is her shop background: http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=countrygal45

What color looks good on her background? She can't figure out a good color to try with the black in the background.

[Rebecca~]

It's a very pretty style of background, but I don't think having different colours with it: it's almost impossible to read text on it, and quite frankly, trying to is straining my eyes. I doubt that having a brighter colour of text will make any difference, unfortunately.

[Mouseykins]

The only thing I can suggest is for her to reduce the opacity of the black so that it's lighter. Like Rebecca said reading text on it is going to give people eyestrain or a headache. I only looked at it for a few seconds and my eyes are still adjusting back.

[siniri]

She could also try changing the white part of the background to a different color; trying to read across light and dark at once is nearly impossible, so a darker "white" area should help. Can you make fonts larger and bold in shops? If so, that also might help. When I've tried to add text across a range of brightness (such as on a signature), I've found that the most readable tends to be either lighter than all colors used or darker than all colors used (lighter if the dominant color is dark, darker if the dominant color is light). Since she's using the extremes of lightness and darkness already, readability will be an issue.