A plethora of exotic textures

At the most unlikely place to look for textures... the website of a store! It's a Chinese shop in New york called Pearl River Mart.

Anyway, maybe someone already beat me to it, but I just wanted to share, as I have no interest in using these textures myself or selling them.

26 high quality textures here
Only flaw is, I don't think they're seamless.

Yes, that's great, but at the bottom of the page (and I'm sure elsewhere on the web site) is this:

Copyright © 2005 Pearl River, Inc. All rights reserved.

Need I say more?

Yup.

Just to add to that, so everyone knows, even if the page didn't mention copyright at all, you still would have to assume the images aren't for your use. All works are assumed protected under the law unless the IP holder directly states otherwise. In other words, unless you've been given permission, you don't have it.

Just because something is on display in no way means it's free for all to copy and use.


Sorry, Nimue.

Oops.

thats not to keep you from hand drawing something similar though? lots of designs are good for inspiration, but not for direct use

Can always write and ask for permission to use these textures. They are not necessarily off limits if you can obtain the authors permission.

All RL copyright issues can easily be dealt with. Just change the color and apply a few other minor changes (replace parts of the pattern or apply a filter) and voila, it's a brand new image free of any copyright.

Even Microsoft does that when it comes to fonts. The font "Arial" is a simple rip-off of Linotype's Helvetica. They just changed a few letters (the upper end of the "t" for example). Not to mention Corel...

Anyway, having worked in the design / printing industry, I can assure you that with sufficient little changes every design element can be stolen legally.

not seamless, but since they actually scan up more than 1 full iteration, it's easy to make them seamless

thanks for the link!

Be very careful about a blanket statement like this.


If that's not an oxymoron, I don't know what is! You still have to contend with fair use rights if you're taking potential business away from the creator of the image by cutting up and reusing the design elements and concept. It's better to go directly to the creator and find out what they are willing to allow. It's pretty risky if you don't, especially for a large corporation like Microsoft! Font creators have a lot of flexibility when it comes to similar designs. Texture artists have less, illustrators have even less, and logo designers have the least amount of flexibility when creating derivative works. The design/illustration business I'm involved in is about being creative and original, not about running a creative chop shop based upon other peoples work. You don't stay in the creative business very long if you develop a reputation as a one trick pony that has to rely on others for your creative juice.

Stealing legally is no real oxymoron, a lot of companies manage to do that. One can do something morally wrong without breaking any law.

Anyway, I'm not telling the thread starter to copy other texture artists work in any way. It's about textures based on photos. Photos are more ore less open source (in practice, not in theory) as long as you don't use them unchanged. If I, for example, need an island with a palm tree for a website design, I'll quickly google for a photo, cut out a palm tree and a bit of sand, bend the palm tree a little and optimize the colors, duplicate the sand pattern to build the island shape, shade that off and I'm done. Nothing to do with being a one trick pony; a palm tree is a palm tree. I can either waste time taking a photo myself or buy CDs with licence-free photo collections for lots of money, or I can use the giant source of images on the web to get my work done quickly and cost-efficiently. Everyone's happy in the end - the customer has his work done, I have a clean conscience because I didn't rip off the complete photo, and the photographer wouldn't ever recognize that the tree was part of his work after I'm done with it.

The photos linked above show patterns of cloth, which will likely be protected as a design patent / registered design. This sounds impressive but means nothing. You can't get a real copyright on a simple pattern or color combination. The cloth designer would have to proof that you a) used exactly the same pattern as he did, same size of and distance between the design elements, b) the same colors and c) that you indeed attempted to copy his work and didn't happen to have the exact same idea. So the same as for any photo applies here too: a few changes and you may use it to your heart's content.

If you read the "about us" part on this page you can see that the copyright is just on the webpage and not necessarily on the designs.

This is a company that imports cloth from asia and makes it available in New York. The original designer of the cloth is the person that holds the "artistic" copyright and chances are they are an unknown worker at some factory in China or southeast asia who got somewhere between nothing and ten bucks for their inspiration. By the terms of their contract it is mosty likely that the company they work for that produces the cloth currently holds copyright and is the one that needs to be asked, not the importer.

Complicating the whole thing is the fact that a lot of these designs, if not all of them are "traditional" and it is likely that they are both partially stolen themselves, or at least contain imagery from mostly public domain or traditional sources. The fortune medalion can not be copyrighted for instance, and many of the other designs look to be lifted from other sources to me.

I'm still unclear as to how one goes about illegally taking something legally.

Until they get caught and have to explain themselves.

It happens all the time in hotels, but what does this have to do with stealing copyrighted photo images?

Excuse me? Have you ever paid a photographer or used an image sourcing service like Corbis or done any image comping?

Where does it say you are free to use the images of the fabric for derivative works and profit? Last I checked, copyright notice on a web page (especially when it's posted on every single page) includes the whole site (images, text, sounds, code, etc.) unless explicitly stated otherwise.

I hope you're not trying to say that it's ok to steal something that has already been stolen. You can question the originality of the fabric images all you want, but that doesn't grant you any of the exclusive rights held by the copyright holder(s), whoever they might be.

In the time it takes to debate about all this, anyone can go to thier local fabric store with a digital camera and get all the source material they want at 4 times the quality and resolution. why bother with a 500x400 jpeg image that looks like it was compressed at about a quality of 30-40?

I just finished compositing 20 or so photographs taken of a basketball court from various angles. All the original photos were taken by a professional photographer and paid for by the client. My services have also been paid for by the client. The services include design and layout, eliminating perspective and lens distortion, editing out volleyball lines logos and imperfections, and building a complete 8000x5000 image that looks nothing like any of the original photos, and would probably sell quite well on it's own as source material for other creative works.

Here's a couple questions for everyone:

Who owns which images? Who needs to ask permission to sell derivative works?

There's a big difference between the theoretical intellectual property rights of a photo as well as the probable design patent on a pattern of cloth and the legal practice. The way it's handled legally: change it enough and you may use it. That's all I'm saying.
Those copyrights have to be as loose as possible, considering that you could get a design patent on something as simple as black dots on white ground. Does that mean breeding dalmatians breaches your design patent? No.

Cutting a part out of any photo and using it for a texture after applying some retouche is just the same as humming a copyright protected song.

Girls, I honestly think the best solution would be to email the creators and ask them whether they'd allow usage. They might like the publicity this virtual clothing endeavor might give them -- and, you might benefit from this if they decide to scan up even more of their fabric!

Put yourself in their shoes. Suppose you took the time to scan all those fabric up, would you like people taking your fabric away for free -- moreover, would you like people taking them away for any use whatsoever?

The least you can do is contact them of usage. I don't think they will outright deny it to you, especially if you tell them the practical advantages of this. Basically, you're working as a "free" virtual clothing designer for them in exchange for fabric usage. You can hype up your email to make it sound like a good deal.

I'd write this, except currently, from my sleep loss, I'm not the most eloquent of sl'ers. Whomever volunteers for this, please make it a group allowance.

ethics smactics!!!

Bingo!

You are now getting into fair use, which is case law and subjective. That means if the copyright holder cries foul you get dragged into court and a judge decides the outcome based on the 4 factors of fair use. Why not ask first and eliminate the risk? If you assume you have fair use rights then you must be very sure your image sampling is de minimis.

Textiles are generally always copyrighted, and you should not use textiles you find through the internet for your creations. Textile artists make plenty of money, and are quick to sue. Many people who have tested this have ended up bankrupt, the former owner of a well established Poser merchant site for example. Your status in whatever internet community will not protect you at all.
It's not difficult to make your own textiles using a graphics editing program and clip art books (I recommend spending some money on Dover books). I've actually seen real textiles on clothing for major brands using their clipart, that's how good it is. For $7-14 a book with hundreds of clip art designs, you can't go wrong.
I wouldn't recommend contacting the website owner and asking permission, because they are most likely only a distributer so their permission is a grain of salt.
Altering the image by "changing the colour etc" does not give you ownership, this is a common misconception, derivatives of things not public domain must be made with permission and are subject to the terms of the real owner. FYI "fair use" generally applies to journalism, documentaries, etc.
The bottom line is, why go through all the effort to manipulate something and completely disregard copyright laws when you can learn to make your own? As easy as illegal ripping might be, it's a world of trouble and no respectful artist would do it.

Well.. if you want to get really technical... here's the copyright law, and some FAQs.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/chapter13.pdf

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.html