Whether you are creating a collage, photo compositions or scrapbook elements, you might be looking for some realistic textures for wood, pavements, bricks, and others. Taking pictures yourself might be the best solution but it is typically less practical because you might not have that particular texture close by to photograph. That is why you can use a great resource site like Textures.com
Free textures
Textures.com (formerly known as CGTextures) includes a wide range of different textures, in various categories. You can find textures for natural elements, man-made objects, bricks, wood and much more.
Once you have created an account (a free one), you get 15 credits per day that you can use to download the textures you want.
Limitations
With a free account, you can only download smaller size images, but typically, those smaller sizes are large enough for most of your projects. And interestingly, many of those images will be seamless. Depending on the type of project you want to use those textures for, it might or might not be necessary. Of course, non-seamless patterns are much more numerous.
Terms of use
Yes, you can use those textures for any of your personal projects, but you can also use them commercially. Of course, you would not be allowed to download the images and then resell them as your own, but especially if you need to tweak them, or you turn them into something else like a frame or paper or a tag, you would be ok.
How to get those textures
Once you are logged in, you can search for a particular type of texture that you want, in the search bar on the top left:
You might get some suggestions as you type and it is up to you if you want to use one of them or not.
Then, you will get various search results, and some of them will look like little balls.
Those are mostly meant to be used with some 3D programs, however, even though you cannot use most of the images in that way, the .tif file would open fine in your PaintShop Pro as a background.
And this texture would be great to use, don't you think?
And for other images available, they are regular .jpg or .png files that you can download and use just like any other images.
This is the free option of Textures.com but they also have a paid plan if you are into using a LOT of high quality and larger size textures, however, I suspect that it is not something you will need since you can get great textures with only those 15 free credits per day. If you need a few more, just come back the next day and you will be able to continue downloading what you need.
Now, you have a great resource to find textures for your next project. What will you use them for?
