After the last few posts on working with textures in Photoshop CS4, I thought I’d do some searching and share some links for free textures. I do think however, that one should go out an shoot their own texture files to create a unique image of your own vs. using someone else work.

29 Most Useful Texture Packs of 2008 - Has a great selection of links to earth tone and vintage style textures.

31 Most Colorful Collection Of High Quality Free Texture Packs - Another good site that did all the work for you, finding great textures.

Texture King - Currently has 337 free texture files.

40 Excellent Photoshop Tutorials for Textures and Backgrounds - A good source for creating your own textures.

CGTextures.com - This site is huge, but unfortunately it is a paysite, but worth checking out.

I have been driving around my Macbook Pro with my new version of Photoshop CS4, trying to learn all the little nuances hidden under the hood. Somehow I got sidetracked and ended up at istockphoto.com looking at textures. Don’t ask me how, it just happens when one has a period of boredom, followed by flashes of inspiration and then some temporary forms of ADHD. Anyway, so I did a search on textures as I wanted to work with some layers in Photoshop and play around with some images I shot over the weekend in Seattle. Not having any textures at the ready, I found this one of a tuscan wall that I figured would work perfect. Yeah I had to pay for it, but I wanted it now and did not have my Europe images close by and the time to spend hours hunting for a texture. Besides I I started looking at my old Europe CD’s, I’d end up on some other tangent and never accomplish my goal , so I bought it.

Originally I was going to use and image of Post Alley by the Pike Place Market, but felt that the Seattle image would work a lot  better. In the upper left corner, you can see the original texture file as well as the Seattle photo I used.

So, let’s see step by step how I created this.

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