Sites with Free Textures
Royalty Free Textures, Backgrounds, and Photos for Commercial Use
May 21, 2009
Free photos, backgrounds, and textures are the life-blood of Web design. There are thousands of sites with free textures, backgrounds, and photos but when one needs them, they seem to hide deeply in the search trail of Google. Here are some sites where it is possible to find free high quality textures.
Some of the sites offer textures only, while the others offer all kinds of photos, backgrounds and other imagery but have large sections with free textures. Some of the sites don't offer millions of textures but what they offer is really good.
Zen Textures
Zen Textures is one of the top sites for free textures (including for commercial use). There are many categories of textures and the major ones are the following: paper, grunge, wood, metal, plants, rust, bokeh, concrete, book covers, fabric, clouds, stone, cardboard, cracked, rocks, paint, and other. The textures' thumbnails are large enough to see what it is about.
Design Packs
Design Pack is another popular site where web masters can check for textures. As with Zen Textures, there is no dilemma quality versus quantity because even though the number of the offered textures is not in the thousands, the packs are with supreme quality and can be easily put to use.
Texture King
Texture King is one more specialized site devoted entirely to textures. The categories are similar to what can be found on other sites – concrete, dirt/sand, fabric, glass, grunge, liquids, metals, miscellaneous, paint, plaster, plastic/rubber, rust, stone/rock, and wood/plant.
Mayang
Unlike the sites up to here, Mayang is not a textures-only (or mainly) site but its textures section is good (http://mayang.com/textures/). The collection is really impressive but if a web master wants to download more than 20 textures a day, this requires payment.
Image After
Image After is a site with tons of textures. Textures are only one half (the other being photos) of the free imagery a web mastercan find there. The collection is really amazing – both in terms of quality and quantity. The thumbnails are rather small but when the mouse is positioned over a texture thumbnail, the popping preview is large enough to see what the texture is about. There are many categories (ceiling, elements, fabrics, food, fur, glass, goo, grounds, leather/skin, light_fx, marbles, metals, nature, paintings, plastics, rock, roof, techno, walls, woods) and each of them has hundreds or even thousands of top quality textures. Image After is certainly worth checking!
Deviant Art
Deviant Art is another site where there is a lot of free imagery, including textures. Deviant Art is special because it is not just another photo site. The site boasts with its artwork and this can be seen in the textures section as well. However, there aren't many textures you can use in commercial projects, so it is necessary to read the license of the particular texture first to see what is allowed to do with it and what isn't.
The above-listed sites with royalty free textures, backgrounds, and photos for commercial use are just a small drop in the sea. There are many more similar sites but the sites with free textures are not that numerous and that is why it is worth for a web master to know where he or she can find royalty free textures for commercial use. This spares hours of searching in vain!
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