Textures can make interesting backgrounds for web sites, but they are also great for use in creating custom images with interest, depth and of course, texture. There are literally thousands of sites where you can find textures, but here are 13 that I check first when I need inspiration, something unique, high quality and low cost.

1. deviantART - A community of artists and enthusaists who submit and share their art. deviantART contains thousands of textures, tiles, backgrounds and images - some are free, some for purchase.

2. Bittbox - Definitely one of my favorite sites for graphic design extras. Bittbox has a nice collection of free Photoshop brushes, fonts, and recently they have added some free textures, too.

3. UrbanDirty - Huge collection of free stock textures for your artwork, desktop, and viewing pleasure.

4. CGTextures - Amazing collection of free textures for use in print and web.

5. GrungeTextures - Free high resolution textures, backgrounds, photos and digital art for use under creative commons license.

6. TextureKing - Growing repository of high quality texture photos that are free for personal and professional use.

7. Texture Library - Good variety of textures from fabric to circuit boards and everything in between.

8. Free3dsTextures - Creative commons license collection of interesting textures

9. Free seamless textures -Tutorials on how to create seamless texture images and a gallery of textures to download.

10. ImageAfter - Free high resolution textures of metals, floors, skin, wood, rock, walls etc for personal or commercial use.

11. Got3d - Free and for purchase textures. The free textures are photographer’s surplus that are free to use but cannot be resold.

12. StockXCHNG - One of my favorite resources for free stock photography also has a good selection of textures.

13. And don’t forget Flickr! Using various search terms, you can find large collections of textures and backgrounds you can download on Flickr. (How to use and understand Flickr images)

More 13’s:

• 13 Sites for Beautiful Patterns and Backgrounds
• 13 Beautiful Pink for October Site Designs
• 13 Ways to Move Big Files on the Web
• 13 Steps to a Blog Redesign