Welcome to the Texturama tutorials section. Here you will find tutorials relevant to working with textures and using them within your 3D and animation tools. We have two sections here... one for photoshop, and one for 3D applications.
Creating a Tileable Texture Map:
Tutorial as published in Graphics.com Guru pages.

Colorizing Textures to Fit Your Color Scheme:
As simple as dragging a slider.
Also removing degrees of color (desaturation).
Making Clean Textures Dirty:
Using the multiply brush at low pressure.
Wacom pad is recommended but not necessary.		    
Converting Your JPEGS and Masks to TGAs:
Easy as 1,2,3.		    
Creating Quick Bump & Displacement Maps:
Using selection feather and airbrush settings.		    
Creating and Using Reflection Masks:
Simple trick for making only windows reflect.
Includes 3D material settings for high-realism.		    
  Use "Levels" Instead of "Brightness/ Contrast":
The graph may look intimidating, but start with sliding the middle ticker left to right... you'll see!
  
 

Additional Tips:

General:
Use a thumbnail browser for day-to-day image work, such as ThumbsPlus from Cerious software. ThumbsPlus makes it easy to view large images in slideshow fashion, or to scale up to full-screen, or to do simple image manipulation within. Managing large numbers of image files becomes a breeze. You can batch process, view one image after another by hitting the space bar or backspace, or view it tiled as your desktop wallpaper by hitting SHIFT-F7.

General 2D:

Subtle color variation can be adjusted using "Image>Adjust>Color Balance" (CTRL-B), whereas strong color variation is achieved using "Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation" (CTRL-U)
The clone tool is like a vacuum that picks up texture from one area and sprays it out over another area. This is the most-used tool for cleaning bad spots out of textures.

Game Engines:
"The power of twos" to use textures with game engines or real-time, simply re-size within photoshop so that you get a perfectly square aspect ratio (512x512 if you like) or in a power of 2, such as 256x512. If there are long or tall textures, merge them together into a square-shaped tile, then offset your mapping coordinates within the engine, so that only one of the maps is used for the particular mesh. Try grouping the horizontal tiles with horizontal, or vertical with vertical.

Batch processing to resize images within ThumbsPlus is awesome... just select the files using SHIFT and/or CTRL, then go to Image>Batch Process. Click "New" then choose "Selected Files" (or "Folder" if you choose)... then under Batch Steps choose "Add", then choose "Transform>Resize". You can then specify a size that you want all the images to become. You can save your batch processes under names which are easily associated with each task.

I've also just recently discovered the power of Macromedia Fireworks for batch processing and re-sizing JPEGs into very small filesizes. The compression is even better than Photoshop CS2.

General 3D:
Break up large expanses of materials with undulating geometry, or altering lighting conditions in different areas. You can also compostite two different organic materials using large-scaled "noise" or "cel" as the mask. That way repitition is minimized.

Keep the lighting angles similar with the texture maps. Sometimes architectural textures have a light-source angle: keep the angles consistent within your scene by flipping the textures so that they match exactly.

Use the opacity maps as shiny maps as well. For architectural windows, the opacity mask levels can be set to 50%, so that you can gently see through the glass, but then the shiny map (set as inverse) makes the glass shinier than the rest of the building.

Flavor your lights with a tad of color ..for outdoors, the sun has juuuust a little yellow, then diffuse has juuuust a little blue.

For organic materials (and ceramic tiles), rotate the mapping gizmo by 45 degrees or similar, so that your whole scene isn't perfectly 90 degrees all over... adds a little interest.

3DS MAX:
The material editor is a powerful control of your texture mapping.

Drag texture map files from Windows folders (or ThumbsPlus) into the map file slots, or use MAX's "Asset Manager". With the Asset Manager, you can even view 3D wireframe file thumbnails, or view webpages, then drag-and-drop web-images directly into the material editor.

Crop texture maps directly within the material editor (this function is fully animateable) if you like a certain part of the texture, then crop from edge to edge to ensure proper tileability.

Color Correct plugin for the material editor is a POWERFUL way to change colors and hues of your textures directly within max, and with realtime results. You can avoid the extra step of changing hues within photoshop.