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

Busy, busy, busy is my life this week, but there are a few posts that I just have to share - just in case you missed it!

Are you using Twitter to connect yet? Wendy has published a huge list of Moms on Twitter while her Dad-focused writer Derek has got the Dads Twit list covered.

Dawud is back with a brand new site design and a thought provoking article on outsourcing for your business.

Chris Garrett wants to know who has upgraded to WordPress 2.5. I have upgraded on some client sites but am holding off on my own for a few more days. I already know that some of my favorite plugins don’t work in 2.5 and that is why I am dragging my feet. I do like the new dashboard though.

Today is CSS Naked Day - as you can see, I’m not baring all, but Phil, Lorelle, Leah and others are.

Katy at I’m Blogging That has a great post on Creating a Comment Community.

Dealing with IE6 has got to be one of my biggest nightmares as a designer. I’m not alone according to Selene’s Save the Developers Upgrade Your Browser post.

When I wrote my post on PDF Basics and Essential Tools, one of the tools I mentioned was Nitro PDF Professional. It is a desktop application that is affordable and extremely powerful in the PDF creation and manipulation department. The team at Nitro PDF saw the post and sent me a license to give their product a try. First impression - WAY COOL.

Nitro PDF Professional goes above and beyond the basic PDF creation capabilities of many of the services I listed. Just a few things you can do with Nitro PDF Professional include:

• Create a PDF from any file on your computer
• Create a PDF from the items in your clipboard or from your scanner
• Combine files from different sources and file types into a single PDF
• Extract PDF parts for use in other files
• Edit text and images in your PDF file
• Highlight and add comments to the PDF
• Add headers, footers, and watermarks
• Convert your PDF to MS Word
• Different security options to control how your document is accessed

I really like the program and will now use it for my daily PDF needs (I am always working with PDFs) and you can, too! The Nitro PDF team has offered to giveaway 3 full licenses for Nitro PDF Professional to my readers. Entering to win one is easy. Leave a comment on this post letting me know you’d like to win. You can blog about it to get a second entry. But act quick! This giveaway will close midnight Sunday, April 6, 2008. I will be drawing the winners at random on Monday, April 7.

Can’t wait to get your full license? You can try out Nitro PDF Professional free for 14 days!

UPDATE: Congratulations to lucky numbers 8 (Lori), 12 (Lindsey) and 23 (OrgJunkie) - I will be in touch with your prize info! Thanks to all who entered! Nitro PDF contacted me last night and loved all of your comments - they have decided to give full licenses to ALL of you who left a comment on this post and entered the giveaway. I will be forwarding your contact info to Nitro and you can expect to get your site license via email shortly. Thanks Nitro PDF!!