Well, it's been awhile. I finally had some time to upload some new free textures! Now that summer is coming to an end, I should have more time to be able to add new design resources to texturemate. The new textures are mainly grungy and were taken in some very cool industrial ruins. Hope you like the new textures!
Texturemate has 5 or 6 different Photoshop brush sets as well as some patterns referenced in the Japanese book, Photoshop Design Tools Premium Edition: Brushes and Patterns. This book contains tons of various free Photoshop design resources. It is available via Amazon.co.jp at:
One tool I have been finding very useful in Gimp lately is the Color Curves adjustment dialog so I figured I would make a quick tutorial or guide on it. I have been finding that it allows you to make nice smooth appearing adjustments to contrast in the image or layer you are working on. Often times I want to increase contrast just a little bit and this tool works very well. Here's an example of a crumpled paper image with the contrast increased for fun:
I uploaded thirty five more textures that I photographed today. I happened to come across a 55 gallon drum of dripping paint and captured some grungy drippy textures! There's some other metal and flaking painted plastic surfaces as well. Hope you like them! Last night I uploaded a new wood brush set as well.
Texturemate now has a blog view if you prefer just seeing the latest graphic design resources and tutorials in the order they are posted! I created this page due to some reader feedback where people wanted to see what the newest resource was, regardless of what it is! The blog view will update whenever a brush set, pattern set, texture pack, or article is posted. Let me know how you like it!
Thirty new texture stock images are up today! They are a mixture of brick, cement, wood, and metal. There are some pretty nasty, cracked, grungy ones. I also uploaded another graphic resource - a pattern set of 30 seamless small pixel patterns! Hope you find them useful! You might notice comments and things are starting to have user avatars; I'm working on getting the site ready for registered users!
I had a chance to upload 60 new textures today of various categories. There are some pretty good grungy, cracked cement textures as well as some fall leave textures that might be good for a fall project. I also managed to get a decent amount of good looking wood textures and a couple of clouds. I also uploaded a brush set of stars that I created as well! Hope you like them!
Creating a brush to use as a background texture is very easy in Photoshop. There are just a few things you have to do to prepare any image so that it can be turned into a brush for use later. In this example, I'll turn a stock texture image into a brush. Note that I am using Photoshop CS5. Here is my original image:
I've had a few people ask me how to get brushes working in Gimp, so here is a quick and easy tutorial. First of all, what is a brush? A brush is simply the shape of your tool when used on your canvas. Brush shapes can be used for the typical paintbrush tool as well as many others, such as airbrush, the eraser, clone, heal, pencil, and many more. Whenever you use a tool that manipulates by single-point mouse-clicks, typically you can use different brushes. Instead of using a plain old circle for your paintbrush tool, a brush lets you use a different, often much more complex shape.
A lot of times, it is hard to find the type of texture you want to use for your project already as you want it. Many times I end up making very nice textures by taking a lot of raw stock texture photos, combining them into the same image as different layers, and then playing with transparencies, masking, and color. Some nice results can be achieved quickly this way, so let's do it! Note that for this particular guide, I am using Gimp but the concepts are all the same in Photoshop. First, I'm going to to think about what I want to make and find some stock textures to use.
Every resource provided on texturemate falls under a Creative Commons License, except credit is not required. The stock textures, texture packs, brush packs, and any other resources available for download on this site are completely free and may be used in commercial or non-commercial applications. Credit to texturemate for use of available textures or brushes is appreciated, but not required. These textures may be used in 3D modeling software packages where their appearance is altered, such as Blender, 3DS Max, Solidworks, CAD, or Second Life. They may also be used in scrapbooking applications. The only exception is that they cannot be redistributed commercially in their unedited form. These textures cannot be re-packaged and resold without significant modifications to their appearance. Brush packs may be used to create unique images in Gimp or Adobe Photoshop, but they cannot be redistributed without being significantly edited. Any resource on texturemate may be linked to when sharing information or resources to others.
My name is Bill Scott; I'm an Electrical Engineer who dabbles as a photographer, graphic artist, web designer, and 3d modeler in my spare time. I created texturemate as my portal to share my own texture images, stock photographs, brushes and other resources I create with others online. I hope you enjoy!
