Take a shot, send us the image and win a Canon Digital Rebel camera. In web design textures are needed in background-images and header graphics. Graphic designers use textures to transport some concrete aspects of real-life into the digital presentation. Textures are also used to create an atmosphere which fits to the main topic or idea of the site.

Such textures are usually extracted from photos. In fact, everybody can create them — apart from a camera no special devices or tools are necessary. You just need to find a texture and you make a shot of it. And here is where our readers come in. With this contest we want to encourage you to go out, take a camera with you, shot textures and send them to us.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for original, manually taken shots of textures. This contest is all about creativity. So take your camera, go out and shoot. Basically, almost everything can be a texture. Of course, walls, paper, ceramics, textile, wood, fabrics, metal, sand, plastic, wallpaper, stone and million of other motifs. Abstract or concrete, beautiful and strange — it’s completely up to you.

A good texture doesn’t have to be clean — on contrary, some beautiful textures can be found there where nobody actually looks at. Besides, some texture convey their beauty once you closely observe them. Just be curious and take a closer look around you. You may want to have a look at this article to get some more ideas: Where can I find textures and background images?

Clean fabric textures can be found everywhere — this shot is taken by Lucy Nieto

Water drops build a nice, irregular texture

This is glass fibre from a boat. Photo: Flickr

“Natural” texture photographed in a wood

Texture made out of bricks in a wall

A knot texture

Stone Texture from Ben Cloward

This one is from a burned down hut

Stones texture which can be found in many sidewalks…

…or buildings.

Sand texture photographed by Kydroon

Wallpaper texture

Vintage fabric found by Stephanie Cake

Contest Details

So what is required to participate? And which rules should you consider before sending us your textures?

Is there a reward? Yes. The camera presented below can be yours. One of participants of Smashing Texture contest will win the Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens. The winner will be determined randomly.

Deadline Send us your textures until the 21st of May 2008. The winner will be announced few days after the deadline.

Formats

• PNG or JPG
• The size of textures is not that important, however they should have at least the width of 1000px.
• All images should be packed in one single .zip-archive; the archive should have a specific file name, particularly your name - e.g. john-doe.zip.
• Every participant can send at most 5 textures (pls send only 1, we’ve got so many entries…). Text-files with copyright information, your URL, country and a brief description of your texture should be placed in the .zip-file as well. Please don’t include any advertisement in the archives.

Copyright, labels, watermarks Copyright information, water marks and URLs are usual for wallpapers, but they would disturb the texture. After all, designers should be able to work with textures after they are presented. Therefore please avoid everything which isn’t really a part of a texture. The participants should own the copyright for the textures they are sending. Textures should be photographed, therefore they shouldn’t be already available somewhere in the Web.

Winner announcement All interesting textures will be presented as screenshots here, on Smashing Magazine and offered for free download to Smashing Magazine readers. The name and URL of participants will be presented, of course. If there will be enough participants, textures will be sorted and categorized.

Where should the textures be sent to? The contest ist closed now.

Get creative, folks!