Lost and Taken - Free stock textures for your graphic design and photography projects

8 Black and White Tree Branch Textures

2008-11-15T22:10:00.000-08:00

The following "textures" may not be textures by the traditional definition, but I feel that they can be used in a similar fashion (i.e. overlaying on other photographs or designs). I'm trying to "branch" out and get some varying content up on the blog, you know...so things don't get too stale.

As fall sets in I'm always amazed to see the naked branches of the trees for the first time in months, it's almost like I forget that there are trees underneath all those leaves. Let me know if you have any feedback, good or bad. I actually shot around 50 images today, but I'm only uploading a few to test the waters. So, if you guys find them useful let me know and I'll upload some more soon. Below is a preview of the eight images in the zip and the download link is at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

One more thing: I'm going to be working intensively on the new blog design for the next couple of weeks, so if you don't hear from me for a few of days don't worry... I'm probably just stuck working out a css problem at 3am.

download the zip here (8 files, 30.5mb)

Website Redesign Coming Soon, Looking for Reader Input

2008-11-10T20:52:00.000-08:00

It's that beloved time again.

Time to change and improve some things and do away with others. It's time for a redesign of Lostandtaken.com! I'm planning on doing a complete overhaul of the blog, while adding some new features along the way. The first and most important priority of the redesign will be improving the user experience of the website, including better organization and navigation. Currently, users have two ways of finding the textures they are looking for: search and the tag cloud. While these two tools are capable enough, I think you'll agree that there are better ways to navigate a website.

I'm going to be as open to you as possible: I didn't start this blog to make money, but with the amount of traffic it receives it should be bringing in more income than it is. I spend a decent amount of time shooting textures for the site and a little money in my pocket is a good incentive for me to keep things good and lively around here. Therefore, I want to implement a new monetization strategy for the blog. I plan on introducing a "Premium Textures" section that includes exclusive texture packs available through either a subscription basis or a one time fee (I'm not sure which yet though). Other than that, I'm going to try and actually decrease the number of ads on the site, while improving on the placement of the ones that remain. I have a few more ideas in mind, but they might not come until further down the road. Enough of all that boring stuff though... ;)

Here's a list of the features I want to implement:

A simple, clean, user friendly redesign
Adding a "User Gallery" that showcases reader's designs and photos that use textures from the site
Premium Textures: Exclusive textures available for a small fee
A "News" section, for letting you know about site related stuff
Adding a new "About" page
More frequent posting (not really a redesign thing I guess, but nevertheless)
*Maybe* Adding the ability for readers to submit their own textures to be posted

While I can't guarantee all of the items on the list will make it onto this redesign, I'm going to try my hardest to implement all of them in the near future.

What do you want?

This time around I'm going to be turning to you, the readers, for some advice on what should be changed and what shouldn't. I run this blog for the readers, so what you guys have to say will greatly impact how the new version of this site turns out.

So please, for the love of all things texture-y, leave a comment with some thoughts and ideas for the new redesign. Let me know if there is a feature I didn't list above that that you would like to see, or let me know if any of my ideas are uncouth (I love that word) and useless.

I look forward to hearing your ideas and criticisms. Thanks in advance!

Caleb

20 Fabric Textures to Dress Up your Design

2008-11-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

I want to preface this article by thanking one of my friends on Twitter for helping me come up with the title for the post, you can follow her here if you like.

I've been meaning to do a fabric textures post for quite some time now, so I'm glad to see these pictures finally come into fruition. This may be one of my favorite set of textures I've posted so far, the colors and patterns are so distinct and vivid I could see them being used in many different ways. I actually shot over 80 pictures, but it was a cloudy, overcast day so most of them didn't come out too great. I'm sure I'll be posting more fabric textures in the near future, so if you like these make sure to check back every once in a while.

Below is a quick preview of six of the twenty textures included in the zip file, which can be downloaded at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

On a side note: Lost and Taken was featured in the most recent issue of Digital Arts magazine. Our textures are included as resources on the disc that comes with every copy of the magazine. Pretty cool stuff! I'm just glad the word is getting out there about all the free textures on this site, I just want to help people out ;)

Download the zip here (20 files, 120mb)

Winners of the Poster Design Contest!

2008-11-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

After three weeks in the running, it is finally time to announce the winners of the political poster design contest here on Lost and Taken. There were 88 entries in total and I can safely say it would have been hard to choose a winner. Luckily, Jay from Bittbox was the judge, so the tough decisions were up to him ;)

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who entered the contest, all of the entries were great and I look forward to seeing what you guys can do in the next contest. I also wanted to say thanks to all the sponsors, you guys are awesome.

Without further ado I present to you the winners of the Political Poster Design Contest:

First Place

What Jay has to say about it: "It's easy to read, well balanced, and has a clear message. It uses a vintage style layout but has a modern feel, and you can recognize which candidate it supports without reading it."

1st Place Prizes

(1) Copy of activeCollab (Corporate license)
6 month subscription to PSDTUTS Plus
(3) Vector packs from Designious
1 year subscription to Freshbooks (Shuttle license)
500 business cards from Uprinting.com

Second Place

What Jay has to say about it: "It's simple, and clearly supports easily recognizable candidates. It puts a personal touch on the "Country First" slogan with a script font and makes good use of texture."

2nd Place Prizes

(1) Copy of activeCollab (Corporate license)
(2) Vector packs from Designious
250 business cards from Uprinting.com

Third Place

What Jay has to say about it: Nice use of texture, an inspiring message and well executed. This one gets a couple extra points for technical skill, and presentation."

3rd Place Prizes

(1) Vector pack from Designious
250 business cards from Uprinting.com

Congratulations to the winners! I need you three to send me your email addresses so I can get you hooked up with the prizes and sponsors, just email me: Caleb

I had a blast hosting and putting together this contest and I plan on doing more of them in the future, hopefully they'll get bigger and better each time around! I hope everyone who entered had fun and I look forward to next time!

If you would like to see all of the entries head over to the Flickr Group and take a look.

20 Epic Cloud and Sky Textures

2008-10-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm obsessed with severe and extreme weather, if you didn't already know that about me. Every Spring, my dad, brother, and I head out on the central planes of the U.S. to chase tornadoes and severe storms. There's really nothing in the World like witnessing the formation of a large tornado right in front of your eyes, you stand in awe of natures glory yet it makes you feel terribly insignificant at the same time.

Over the years I've documented our trips with my camera and I've amassed nearly 75 gigs worth of storm and sky pictures. I've skimmed the top of that collection to bring you the following cloud textures... I thought "Why should I keep these pictures to myself, when they would make such great textures?"

If you would like to see a few of our storm chasing pictures you can head over to my flickr gallery.

Below is a quick sample of seven of the textures in the zip file located at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

Download the zip here (20 Files, 47 MB)

Update on the Political Poster Design Contest

2008-10-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

Hello all! I just wanted to take a second and remind everyone that there are only 6 more days to enter the Lost and Taken Political Poster Design Contest.

Thus far we have 45 excellent entries and over 50 members in the flickr group. Submissions to the group will be closed at midnight on Thursday, October 30th. Over the weekend Jay from Bittbox will sift through the entries and choose the three he thinks are best and the winners will be announced on Monday, November 1st, the day before the general election. Those three winners will all get prizes from our sponsors, the entire prize pool is worth over $1000!

If you are interested in submitting make sure you check out the original post, then head over to the flickr group to submit your entry.

Good luck to everyone!

Textures of the Fall: 26 Dead Leaf Textures

2008-10-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I posted 25 Free Plant Textures, and the leaves and plants were fairly colorful. Well, fast forward a week or two and there are more leaves on the ground than there are in trees. So, I thought I'd get in one last plant texture pack before the cold, harsh winter sets in and all the leaves shrivel up.

Here I present to you the fruits of my labor: 26 free dead leaf textures. There's a quick sample below and a link to the zip file at the bottom of the post.

Download the zip file here

27 Design Tutorials that Utilize Textures

2008-10-13T20:50:00.001-07:00

Since the day I've started this blog I've heard numerous times from people who like the textures here, but aren't sure how to use them in their designs. Since I'm a photographer by day and a designer by night I probably wouldn't be the best tutorial writer, but there are plenty of designers out there who are. I've rounded up 27 tutorials from some of the best designers out there, together they will teach you how to include some awesome textures in your designs. Oh, and photographers don't feel left out, I'm doing a photography texture tutorial roundup soon.

Give your car a little wood - Repaint your car with a wooden texture Create a Retro Grunge Poster

The Dark Knight Grunge Wallpaper

Create a Stunning Stone Cursed Man

Using Some Free Stuff to Create a Wallpaper

Design a in City Style Poster

Designing a Typographic Concept Poster

Make an Inspiring Artistic Poster with Drawn Elements
Create a Textured Journal Icon

Distressed Effects in Photoshop

Incredibly Realistic Burnt Parchment in Photoshop

Super Cool Frilly Bits Typography

How to Create a Great Grunge Web Design in Photoshop

Create a Wicked-Worn Vintage Pop Art Design

Create an Old-Collage Effect Poster

Create a September 2008 Calender Using a Grunge Design

Design an Extreme Grunge Wallpaper

Create an Artistic One-Eye TV Man in a Grunge Design

Applying Texture to an Object A Retro Wallpaper Step by Step

Add Stock Textures to Images for Extra "Oomph"

Making a Grungy Business Card

Create an Abstract Retro Wallpaper

Starcraft 2 Wallpaper Design

Impressive Photo Background

Making a Print Ready Business Car Using Only Photoshop

Design a Grungy Floating Island

Political Poster Design Contest - Over $1000 in Prizes!

2008-10-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

Introduction

I'm pleased to announce Lost and Taken's first design contest. We have all the ingredients for an awesome competition: Cool prizes? Check. Interesting theme? Check. Handsome judge? Check. Sounds like we are good to go.

The Theme

As many of you know, on November 4th the United States will elect a new president to take charge for the next four years. Both candidates have differing views on many of the prominent social, economic, and political troubles that plague our time, and they both offer their own solutions to these problems as well as their own prospect for hope and prosperity in the future. Keeping these ideas (and the following examples) in mind, the task for this contest is to design a political poster that pertains to the important issues of our time, i.e. the election 08, war in Iraq, the economic crisis, global warming, etc. There's only one catch: you must use one of the textures from Lost and Taken in your design. You can alter the textures however you like and they don't have to be (and shouldn't be) the prominent feature of your design, just so long as you use one ;)

Some political poster links and examples:

The Sponsors

It's time to give a shout out to the sponsors of this contest, I want to thank them for their gracious prize donations and their support of the design community.

activeCollab

Designious

PSDTUTS

Uprinting.com Business Cards

FreshBooks

The Rules

You must use one of the textures from Lost and Taken in your design (this is a texture site after all ;)
Entries must revolve around this years candidates (including vp's) and/or the pressing political topics of our day
Multiple entries are allowed
Entries should be sized 750x1000 or 1000x750

The Prizes

I know this is the part everyone will be skipping down to read first, so here we go:

1st Place

(1) Copy of activeCollab (Corporate license)
6 month subscription to PSDTUTS Plus
(3) Vector packs from Designious
1 year subscription to Freshbooks (Shuttle license)
500 business cards from Uprinting.com

2nd Place

(1) Copy of activeCollab (Corporate license)
(2) Vector packs from Designious
250 business cards from Uprinting.com

3rd Place

(1) Vector pack from Designious
250 business cards from Uprinting.com

The Judge

I sought out a judge who not only has obvious good taste in design, but is also fairly well known within the design community. Judging this contest is none other than Jay Hilgert of Bittbox.com! I'm excited to have Jay on board and look forward to seeing which designs he chooses as the winners.

The Entry Guideline and Deadline

The deadline for entries to the contest is Thursday, October 30th and the winners will be announced the day before the general election on Monday, November 3rd. I'll be using flickr to host all of the entries, so just head on over to the LostandTaken.com Political Poster Contest group and upload your designs to the group pool.

I think that's about it, if you have any questions feel free to hit me up on Twitter: @calebkimbrough or leave a comment on here and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

I look forward to seeing all the entries. Good luck!

25 High Resolution Plant Textures

2008-10-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

Just the other day, I commented on Twitter how beautiful this fall weather has been lately... Which got me to thinking: I better go out and take some plant textures before they all disappear this winter. Even while I was out shooting I noticed a lot of the leaves falling from the trees, ahhhh fall.

So here they are for you in all their green and brown glory: twenty five plant textures. There's a quick sample below then a link to the zip file below that. Enjoy!

Download the zip file here

Introducing Grab Bag Texture Thursdays!

2008-10-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Introducing Grab Bag Texture Thursdays (GBT for short): every Thursday I'll post a random number of assorted textures for you to download.

Why, you ask? Often times when I'm out shooting pictures I come across a texture that looks really cool, but doesn't warrant an entire blog post by itself. Therefore I needed a way to share these awesome and useful textures with the community, without flooding your rss readers.

Here's a sample of what's in this weeks pack:

Download the zip file here

Ideas, Improvements, and Inspiration: The Future of Lost and Taken

2008-09-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

The time has come for us to start thinking about the future...

But before we do that, let's take a look at the past. I started this blog on June 24th, 2008...not too long ago when you think about it. In between then and now we've garnered over 65,000 unique visitors who viewed nearly 200,000 pages accounting for 530 gigabytes of bandwidth. We've had 600+ rss subscribers and 1,279 favorites on http://delicious.com. We've also been through one major redesign (let's just forget about that first version, all right?).

We currently have 191 free textures available for commercial use and this is where you come in. I've put a link up top that takes you to the suggestions page. Use it, and use it often. I'm always coming up with new ideas for textures and posts (some of which are below), but there's always room for improvement. I want to cater to the creative community's needs, and it's easier for me to do so if I know exactly what it is you want. So if you have a certain type of texture you'd like to see more of or an idea for an article or tutorial, please let me know via the suggestions page.

Another thing I want to focus on improving, aside from the content, is the functionality and features of the website itself. A couple of months ago when I started this blog, I thought it would do alright...but not nearly as good as it's doing at the moment. I believe that with a little fine tuning it can become even more successful. First and foremost, I would like to implement an easier way to navigate through the textures on the site (they are, after all, the most important part), so any ideas or suggestions in this area would be appreciated. I've also tossed around the idea before of creating a more "interactive" experience for Lost and Taken. Perhaps including some sort of user upload feature for textures and/or showcase of artworks created with the textures from this site. I also thought a "texture zeitgeist" from around the web might be kind of neat, just a little sideblog showcasing other texture articles. I don't want this site to become another social network to add to your list (we all have far too many as it is, right?), but I do believe that a more interactive set of features could improve and extend the sites functionality. If you would like to give me some input on all of this, just leave me a comment.

Lastly, I would like to break out the crystal ball and give you a sample of just a few of the texture packs that will be coming out in the immediate future:

Sky and Clouds:

Food:

Fabric:

Plants:

So there you have it, a recap of the past and a look into the future of Lost and Taken. I'm very happy that I'm able to help out the design community through this blog and I look forward to continuing to do so.

Caleb

Out of Focus: 30 Free Bokeh Textures

2008-09-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

It seems as though there is a "bokeh revolution" going on these days, thanks to Bokeh Wednesday we get to see awesome bokeh pictures on Flickr every week. If you aren't a photographer or aren't familiar with bokeh here is a quick rundown:Bokeh (derived from Japanese boke ぼけ, a noun form of bokeru ぼける, "become blurred or fuzzy") is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.^[1] Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.

Today I'm giving away 30 free bokeh textures for you to focus on (mwahah). I know these technically aren't "textures", so feel free to leave me a comment letting me know if you like them or not.

Here's a sample of what comes in the zip file (download it at the bottom of the post):

Download the zip file here

7 More Free Grunge Textures

2008-09-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

We'll make this a short and sweet little ditty today. Below are seven grunge textures, just click on the image to download the high res version. You can never have too many grunge textures, right?

17 More Old Book Cover Textures

2008-09-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

You can never have too many book textures right? The response to last weeks "15 free book textures" was so strong I decided to go ahead and post another 17 for your downloading pleasure. All of the images were scanned by Sean Tejaratchi and given to Lost and Taken to redistribute to the design community as copyright free textures.

The textures are high resolution, large files (up to 15mb), and in the jpeg format. Below are five examples from the pack, and below that is the download link. Now what are you waiting for? Get downloading and designing.

Download these and the other twelve textures by clicking here

Don't forget to check out the previous post: http://www.lostandtaken.com/2008/09/15-old-book-cover-textures-high-res-and.html

Two Free Stringy Textures

2008-09-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to lie, I like stringy things. Whether it be string cheese or tying my shoe laces, I enjoy everything thin and thread like. So when I saw this air filter laying around I couldn't help myself but take a few shots of it.

And now, I present them to you. High res and free, as always.

(just click on the images to download them)

15 Old Book Cover Textures - high res and free

2008-09-05T18:31:00.000-07:00

When Jay over at Bittbox posted his "Anatomy Of A Really Old Book" I admired it like many others and thought to myself "Someday, when I have time, I'm going to try something like that." Well, just the other day I was contacted by Lost and Taken reader Sean Tejaratchi about some old book textures he had scanned a while ago while working at an old book store (imagine that, old books coming from old book stores...) and my quest for good book textures had been fulfilled. Sean has graciously decided to share his treasure trove of textures with everyone who visits Lost and Taken. Here is what he has to say about them:

I believe it's closed now, but in 2000, I briefly worked in a cavernous, decrepit bookstore called Amitin's, in downtown St. Louis. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes of used books, teetering in the aisles, everything in various states of disrepair and sometimes decomposition. In rare cases where books had to be discarded, Larry Amitin, the endearingly cranky owner, would remove striking book covers and sell them for a few bucks each. When Christmas rolled around, I made scans of these covers, burning them onto CDs for a few graphic designer friends. These textures and patterns come in handy in the past, and I'm sure others will find something useful as well.

I just wanted to take a minute and thank Sean on behalf of all of the readers of Lost and Taken, it's always good to meet designers who outwardly help other designers through giving away free resources. That's what this website is all about after all. Sean's paper zine can be found here and here.

Here is a preview of the 15 textures included in the link at the bottom of the post:

You can download the zip file by clicking here

Six high quality free grunge textures - Pt. 1

2008-09-02T01:46:00.000-07:00

With the redesign of Lost and Taken comes a re-evaluation of the format through which I deliver my textures. From now on you'll notice that the site will appear much more "blog-like" than before, which is better for both you and I. Instead of posting a single image at a time, I'll be posting collections of similar images (which in my mind is a lot more interesting and a lot less stagnant). I'll also occasionally write an article about other textures and texture websites from around the internet, but one thing's for sure: I'll still deliver the best textures I can to you and they will remain free and copyright-free.

So, without further ado, I present to you: six high quality free grunge textures. You can download them through the link at the bottom of the post. Enjoy!

Click here to download these six textures in a zip file