Gmail received an updated look to match the rest of Google’s products adopting the Google+ styling theme. It is now introducing custom themes. You can choose to use any of your photos on Google+, a variety of featured photos from Picasa, an image from a URL, or to upload your own image. It’s nice to add a splash of color to your email but finding something just right can take a little testing out. Here’s how you take advantage of the custom themes in Gmail:
Start by heading for the Gear menu in the top-right corner. Click on that menu and click on the ‘Themes’ entry further down.
This will take you to the Themes tab on the Settings page. You can choose from some of the existing color or HD themes. To choose a custom photo, click on the Light or Dark button below “Custom Themes”. Once you have an image selected, you can switch between Light and Dark to find out which color scheme works best for the buttons with your image in the background.
When you click one of the Custom Themes buttons, you’ll get a popup layer allowing you to select some beautiful photos. You can switch to your Google+ photos, upload a photo, or paste a URL from the left hand side. Just click on the photo you want and hit the ‘Select’ button below.
With that, your background image will fade in to be the newly selected photo. Now that you have an image selected for a custom theme, when you visit the Settings, Themes page you will see a ‘Change background picture’ link. Use that link to open up the popup layer where you choose different pictures.
I’m enjoying going through the various pictures but I’m yet to settle on one that I really like that doesn’t obscure the text too much. At least, I can always switch back to the Light color theme if I don’t find anything.
(via Official Gmail Blog)