and also allows white b/g images to 'present' a little better on the page.
http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/106879/apples.html
http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/143603/squid.html
http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/138982/animated.html
http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/136331/cointreau.html

Brad and vokaris have made a good point in defense of white.

Not that it matters, since I agree with your point, but the color of the background on the last two images there isn't white. At least, not pure white, unless my eyes are messing with me.

100%

After reading the previous postings on this and other similar posts I have a few observations that I would like to share.

If the site changes I don't think that there will consensus on any change and the outcome will be a comprise.

If design has to be sacrificed for cost, then don't do anything until cost becomes less of an issue and then let design rule.

If the design is poor and we change the colour we still have a poor design, just in a different colour.

Basically we are, because of our passion for design, extremely self-critical and at the same time driven to have the best design on the web because design is part of all our souls. We as a group are constantly altering, improving designs in all our thoughts, and we will never be satisfied. It's our curse, our punishment, it's who we are.

The casual site visitor does not care about how PSC looks because they are mildly curious about photoshop and probably googled the word and visited the site and moved on, not because of the sites design but they do not share in our passion.The people with this passion are here inspite of whatever design they joined under. The new members will also visit and they will stay because like us they are artists.

Proud to be here!

well sai dbro.

grey is the best

grey is for any style

I too like the white in the contests, but I also think its too sterile looking on the home page.

To fix the other problem, all you really need to do is use the eye dropper tool to make yer borders whatever color the contest page ends up.

at least kill the white overspill/background on a 22 inch screen there is 765 pixels of page, mostly white, and 890 pixels of blinding white background (+25 pixels of scrollbar)

Ditto. I could see changing the header bar but.....

Weird, thought I posted this this early afternoon. Anywayz

This is a layout I had in mind couple of months ago while I was doing some background stuff on psc. Updated it a bit with current stuff that's being said.

The image shown is based on a 1024px screen, but the idea is that it's a liquid layout.

Column 1 shows some global info on the contests (image of the day, winner, maybe some other boxes beneath)

Column 2 has user related and current contests boxes

Column 3 Contains the News, Upcoming special events (if any), forum summary etc...

This i snot really about the design, but about the layout. Currently there's a lot of wasted space, and the idea is to work more horizontally then vertically (see the 'important' stuff all at once, ordered in groups.)