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Where can I find textures and background images?

By Smashing Editorial, January 2nd, 2007 in Graphics | 52 Comments | Forum

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. Links checked: May/25. 2008

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.
Amazing Textures
amazing textures - free hi res images to download and use in 3d modeling and animations
Background City
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
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
Tirad
You are welcome to use these textures in your works….
WebGround
Thousands of original background textures for your Work.

Published in Graphics, January 2nd, 2007
Tags: backgrounds, downloads, free, Graphics, textures, wallpapers

1.

Joe Martinez (January 2nd, 2007, 5:26 am)

Another great article. Well done.
2.

Allen Herman (January 2nd, 2007, 10:13 pm)

Thank you for the great resource!
3.

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!
4.

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.
5.

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.
6.

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.
7.

Jim (March 7th, 2008, 5:14 pm)

Great site for new and fresh textures
8.

pixelcore (March 12th, 2008, 11:03 am)

Great resource. thanks
9.

Thijs Visser (April 8th, 2008, 11:56 am)

Great. Will sure come in handy for my upcoming grunge website!
Thanks!
10.

Me (June 23rd, 2008, 11:08 pm)

what about Link [www.free-seamless-textures.com]
11.

MUSK (July 18th, 2008, 7:06 am)

It’s really a nice site n keep it up:::?
12.

where can i buy (August 12th, 2008, 1:16 am)

Hi webmaster!
13.

buy valium onli (August 18th, 2008, 3:28 pm)

Hi webmaster!
14.

Matt (December 19th, 2008, 2:40 am)

A nice selection of resources and useful information. thanks.
I know of a good source for YouTube backgrounds that work with other sites to, available for free download with no spam.
Get cool Free YouTube Backgrounds that fit their new Wide Format now at CustomYouTubePage.com. Click here:Link []
15.

MUSTAFA (January 13th, 2009, 7:37 pm)

Thank u for this great websit
16.

vanapalli paparao (March 2nd, 2009, 10:57 pm)

Excellent Site.Its very helpfull to us.
17.

INVICTRA (April 17th, 2009, 11:19 am)

Great site.