You can never have too many textures. I shoot a lot of my own when possible, and share here under a Creative Commons 0 license so you can use them as you wish. You may provide credit to Aaron Pate, but it is not required.
Not sure what textures are for? Graphic design, VFX, digital painting, 3D animation, and game design use real-world photographic textures to add organic quality to digital designs. Learn more in my introductory post about textures here.
Concrete, Brick, & Stone Textures
Glass Textures
I have to thank a good friend for breaking his iPhone screen, which is where two of these awesome broken glass textures come from. I believe the other two are from a dirty car windshield.
Metal Textures
Rusty metal, corrugated metal siding, and a really closeup shot of speaker mesh.
Cloud & Sky Background Plates
Skies are great for background replacements or “plates” in visual effects work. It’s tough to match the lighting, so I try to shoot as many different types of skies as possible. Several of these cloud textures are panoramas, so be prepared for a large file.
Wood Textures
Dry wood planks, polished furniture, hardwood floors, and flaking paint on old plywood. These wood textures have wonderful organic variation in their grain and finishes. The unstained pine boards are from my editing desk before I finished building it. Cool!
Paper Textures
Wrinkled paper, stained book pages, lined notebook paper, and cardboard. I get a lot of mileage out of paper textures for graphic design. I love aged paper for that old parchment look.
Signage
These high-resolution photos are of signage. You could use clean signage graphics in your graphic design, but these are weathered, have imperfect edges, mounting screws, for a more photorealistic design.
If you’d like to support these free resources and my blog, I do accept donations here. If you are going to purchase Adobe Photoshop, or other tools in the Adobe Creative Suite, you can use this link and your purchase will support this blog at no extra cost to you. Thank you!