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Where can I find textures and background images?
January 2nd, 2007 in Graphics | 62 Comments
If you are a graphic designer, you probably know that textures and background images are essential for every project which is related to graphics or design. But where to search for quality images if you can’t find anything usable on your PC?
Web offers many useful resources one should always keep in mind searching for textures. Below you’ll find a hand-picked selection of some useful resources related to textures and background images. We tried to pick the best ones which offer quality and professional content without annoying advertisement.
Following repositories offer “free” textures, which means that you can use them for both personal and commercial projects according to the license mentioned on the web-site you’ve downloaded the images from. The images in this article have been taken from the sites described in this list.
- Dr. Web Textures
Dirty Brick Walls, Wood, Stone, Grafitti and more… free to use for any project, personal or professional. - Absolute Cross
Free Seamless Background Textures - over 500 hundred free seamless textures.
- Afflict
100% free textures - Amazing Textures
amazing textures - free hi res images to download and use in 3d modelling and animations - Animax
1000 Free Textures. - BackgroundCity
free backgrounds, wallpapers and textures - BEN CLOWARD
An archive of free texture maps for use in 3D animation
- Beta-Soft.Net
Over 500 Free Textures - Blender Texture Cd
This is the collection of textures and materials of the “Blender Texture Disk” - “The Blender Foundation has now decided to open up this content entirely as public domain. - CGTextures
Photo textures for 3D artists and game developers
- Citrusmoon
Free Patterns, Tiles, Backgrounds - FreeFoto.com
Free Pictures - Picture of Textures. Here you will find over a three hundred pictures of various textures. Bark, Brick, Cobbles, Curves, Glass, Light, Paint, Pebbles, Stone, Tarmac, Water, and Wood. - gallerie1
Free Textures 
- Image*After - free textures
Free high resolution textures. free for commercial and personal news. Daily updates - Lemog3d - 3dTextures
You can find here a great choice of textures, all “seamless”, principaly meant to used in your favorite 3d software……and it’s completely free - Mayang’s Free Textures
Over 3400 free to download, free to use, high-resolution textures - PlanIt 3D
Free 3d models textures - repeatXY - Find your tileable background image
A big collection of finest tileable background images for use in web pages. Download for free. Easy, fast and comfortable preview of every image. Searchable by colors.
- Spiral Graphics
Free Tiling Texture Materials - Genetica Texture Packs are high quality collections of royalty-free seamless textures. - 2D Valley Gallery
Free Photoshop resources and more for the 2D artist - Squidfingers / Patterns
169 Patterns
- TextureWarehouse | Free Texture Images
Free, High Resolution Textures to Designers and 3D Artist. Iimages are licensed under a Creative Commons License - The Limelite - Textures
A portfolio of free textures…. - TextureKing
Throughout this site you will find a growing repository of high quality stock photos that are free for professional and personal use.
- Texture Library
Another free library of textures - The TextureBin
High Quality Seamless & Non-Seamless Textures - Tirad
You are welcome to use these textures in your works…. - WebGround
Thousands of original background textures for your Work.
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Joe Martinez (January 2nd, 2007, 5:26 am)
Another great article. Well done.
Allen Herman (January 2nd, 2007, 10:13 pm)
Thank you for the great resource!
Lesa King (January 2nd, 2007, 11:58 pm)
Nice set of resources!
Another *great* one is Link [www.istockphoto.com]. Over a million images in the database–all royalty free, high quality, and affordable–and growing strong!
lenseffect (January 3rd, 2007, 9:20 pm)
Great article as aways :) but you are forgot one of the best for textures, The PsicoSonic Man Company - Artistic Digital Resources - Link [www.psicosonic.net]
they have great HQ textures of Wood, metal, stone, walls, doors, tiles, cloths, paper, concrete, bricks, floors, name the surface you want for your model.
Palaces, castles, mountains, forests, antique cities, little villages, are some of the settings we have wandered through on the quest for high quality images.
Grouped in categories, they all are high resolution textures, accompanied by their own bumpmaps.
You can only download 25 per day.
Cheers :)
Peace, Love, Music
cole007 (January 6th, 2007, 12:50 am)
some good textures over at Link [www.escrappers.com]
volkan.ozcelik (January 6th, 2007, 8:30 pm)
Thanks for compiling this great list.
You can also find thousands of “texture-like” Turkish carpet images at Link [www.carpetsland.com]
Though I don’t know the licensing details of the images. Better contact the site owner.
Cheers.
loila (January 11th, 2007, 6:29 am)
The Online Flash
Link [www.theonlineflash.com]
Jason (January 13th, 2007, 8:50 pm)
“Just a personal stockgallery with mostly dirt or industrial themes in a different manner. A huge repository for every dark & dusky artist is waiting for you.”
Link [stock.diwiesign.com]
Jenks (January 14th, 2007, 3:09 pm)
Seems another great texture site was left out of this list, Link [www.TiledTextures.com,] they don’t serve up the odd-shaped stuff a lot of the other texture sites do, these are square AND seamless AND high quality, can’t beat that!
Link [www.tiledtextures.com]
Jenks (January 14th, 2007, 3:10 pm)
Seems another great texture site was left out of this list, Link [www.TiledTextures.com,] they don’t serve up the odd-shaped stuff a lot of the other texture sites do, these are square AND seamless AND high quality, can’t beat that! Oh, and there’s over 6,000 original textures there, all categorized! Wow!
Link [www.tiledtextures.com]
Ryan (January 18th, 2007, 10:21 am)
great post, I must have thousands of textures saved on my computer but I’m ALWAYS looking for more. I do a ton of grunge and realistic style design, thus…there is no such thing as too many.
Thanks for the links!
Gerry (January 22nd, 2007, 2:25 am)
i love it…design your own background and share it with us: Link [bgmaker.ventdaval.com]
Jack Evans (February 10th, 2007, 2:31 am)
Another great site that I use all the time is Link [www.sxc.hu]. A free registration gets you access to a huge number of free-for-download stock photos, many of which make great textures.
Cam (February 27th, 2007, 11:28 pm)
Excellent article, very resourceful. Another new textue site that has some half-decent orginal and free textures is “Texture Monkey”:
Link [www.texture.dnsdojo.com]
All of these textures are seamless too.
Piyal Kundu (March 6th, 2007, 5:04 pm)
My favourite website for high quality textures is deviantart.com. Lots of high rez textres can be downloaded for free.
builder2000 (March 7th, 2007, 8:36 pm)
I found this link while browsing the internet. There are a lot of free high resolution textures, pretty nice, some of them tileable - all made from photos
Link [www.textureworks.com]
krom (March 8th, 2007, 2:02 am)
This is a really good texture site: Link [www.clonkit.webhop.net]
Flipper74 (March 12th, 2007, 1:14 am)
Thanks bulider2000, nice link, already considering buying the whole package…
it’s the first time they show exactly what you buy, not like other rip-offs.
thanks again
here’s the url:
Link [www.textureworks.com]
Sam (May 11th, 2007, 11:33 am)
Here is another great texture site:
Link [www.texturearchive.com]
Neil Williams (July 2nd, 2007, 4:42 am)
There are some great sources of background textures and wallpapers listed here!
Just wanted to add that users of Funky Homepage can add any of these background images and textures from the sources listed freely to Funky Homepage…
Link [www.funkyhomepage.com]
Just click on the “Change Background” link at the top left of Funky Homepage and add the address of the image you want in the box provided. It will then be automatically tiled as the background to Funky Homepage!
helaene (July 11th, 2007, 4:11 am)
don’t forget Link [thefatstrawberry.com]!
Jon (August 23rd, 2007, 4:07 am)
Lots more free texture links: Link [www.freeres.info]
IvanFL (September 2nd, 2007, 11:01 pm)
Large collection just beginning to be put out for download. Grunge, abstracts,etc
Link [www.1001textures.com] (work in progress)
john dohn (October 15th, 2007, 5:45 pm)
another great resource of free seamless tileable texures: Link [www.yourdailytexture.com]
mc2 (January 8th, 2008, 7:36 am)
Free textures for commercial or personal use Link [www.texturebits.blogspot.com]
RIya (January 14th, 2008, 9:14 am)
i think you have forgotten the best seamless textures website
Link [free-seamless-textures.royaltyfreestuff.org]
Gordon Stewart (January 24th, 2008, 2:41 pm)
Another great site with free photographic textures: Link [texturebarn.headfirstdm.com]
Donna Kilmore (February 14th, 2008, 6:23 pm)
A great site for fantastic background stock photography for websites and any project such as Powerpoint or even press is a site called Link [www.backgroundshed.com]. They don’t require a subscription or the purchase of credits. Really nice stuff.
DarkLight (February 16th, 2008, 6:35 am)
You can download them from Link [www.3dcube.net].
Tom (February 19th, 2008, 5:42 am)
Please allow me to add Link [texturez.com] to this collection
Jim (March 7th, 2008, 5:14 pm)
Great site for new and fresh textures
pixelcore (March 12th, 2008, 11:03 am)
Great resource. thanks
Thijs Visser (April 8th, 2008, 11:56 am)
Great. Will sure come in handy for my upcoming grunge website!
Thanks!
Clem (May 9th, 2008, 6:46 am)
my new site Link [www.leldoradodestextures.com] allow to download some free big textures.
sorry for my english :)
Husac (May 16th, 2008, 7:19 am)
Hi!
You can use my photos for free at Link [freeartisticphotos.com] - all of them are taken by me and made Public Domain ; hope you enjoy them!
Cheers, Husac!
I hope that you found it interesting!