I posted the original thread in the Visual Arts forum, but unfortunately it's either getting little traffic or my thread title isn't pimpy enough. As such I'm double posting it here pretty much verbatim (as I could really use some of the answers at a shorter notice - especially the ones that Googling won't produce). I hope you mods can understand and will delete the other - at this point empty - post (as I cannot do so).

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These questions are aimed primarily at artists and project leaders.

Without further ado:

1) How many textures would you expect to be in a normal size library? Or would you prefer to purchase individual textures one by one?
2) How much would you pay for a library of, say, 500 high quality textures with a tiled option for textures that support it? How much would you be willing to pay for a single high quality general purpose texture?
3) What's are the first places you go to to find new textures?
4) Do you expect non-texture additions (normal maps and such) to be included in a library? Would you consider paying extra if that was an option?
5) What resolutions are your generally after/ready to accept as valid? I'm thinking 2048x2048, 1024x1024, 512x512 and 256x256 are givens here - I'm rather more curious if you'd be okay with non-power-of-two, max resolution texture maps or non-warped arbitrary size textures?
6) What types of textures are you most interested in (organic, rock, wood, logos, etc)? The question here is also: what types of textures are the greatest deficit out there?
7) How often do you find yourself in need of "texture collections of a single object or theme" (eg the sides of crate or a building, grass, dirt, rubble and such, etc)? How many textures do you think would be sufficient "on a theme" (eg cross-tileable dirt)?

Thanks in advance for your insight!

1. This actually does belong in visual arts, not the lounge.

2. Either you are an artist or not. If you are an artist than you should know all these answers and understand how texture libraries work and might cost.

3. Your actually posting in the wrong forum website, almost everyone here is a programmer.

4. Google texture dvd/library. You will see plenty of costs and can usually view previews.

(1)/(2) Not sure, I'd have a look around at the other shops to see what the market is like.

(3) Google :P

(4) A 'texture' isn't complete if it's just diffuse color these days. Normal map and a specular/glossiness mask are standard.

(5) Yeah non-standard sizes would be ok if it suits the item being depicted.

I'm not really asking this question on my own behalf - rather on behalf of a friend who has a considerable number of images that he's accumulated over the years, that he is considering turning into a texture library. He, however, has no experience with this particular type of industry (and neither do I). We did do some Googling; however the results we ended up with were kind of erratic and not that easy to draw direct conclusions from. It's kind of difficult to see which texture packs/sites are the definitive ones on the market, which is why I'm asking the questions here.

>> 1. This actually does belong in visual arts, not the lounge.

Please read the very first paragraph of the OP.

>> Either you are an artist or not. If you are an artist than you should know all these answers and understand how texture libraries work and might cost.

Thank you for a completely vague answer. I am not an artist, which is precisely why I'm asking. And even if I was one, I should think I might have my reasons of asking this - the pricing seems to range from 8 cents to a few dollars per texture, which doesn't tell me much as I can't really judge know the relative quality of all the various texture libraries. In the end it's a lot more reliable for me to have my question answered by someone who actually deals with this on a daily basis rather than trying to piece together the puzzle myself. PS - I don't agree with your statement that these boards are frequented almost exclusively by programmers: many, if not most, (especially indie) developers and project leaders are often aware of these types of things without having to expressly label themselves as artists.

>> A 'texture' isn't complete if it's just diffuse color these days. Normal map and a specular/glossiness mask are standard.

Some of the packs seem to include these; however it seemed to make sense to present this as a question.