I can see what Jynks is describing. On the first image the a big black block in the middle, on the others there's some 'seaming' or whatever its called when you reapply the same texture more than once.
I think its probably your brightness settings for your monitor more than anything (assuming you aren't using a CRT). I'm working on a little cross-site redesign; I've never really been a front end designer so its about time something was applied.
I'm working on the following as design principles:
- Promotion of content and tighter navigation links
- Better visibility / slightly brighter design
- A bit of AJAX to make use of space
- Retention of existing theme
General features I want to push out:
- VIP / Private forums
- Collections portal to offload traffic from the very inefficient phpbb method