Quote - Which means that a photo base texture that has not been manipulated is only truly realistic when the lighting conditions and other objects in the 3D scene match the lighting conditions and other objects of the setting where the photo was taken.
To separate the different components of the material, so that the texture map can be used in other (3D) settings, the photo must be edited, which is an art and craft all by itself. 

 

Yeah, tell me about it! 
It's no joke working the images into decent texture maps! Luckily for the moment I prefer to paint to crunching numbers (which I get to do for work). Still, those whom visit the few images in my gallery are likely to notice that almost all of my textures there are procedural.

Back to image maps, I thend to create my own, either trapsing around neigborhood taking photos, or scanning in found objects. I tend to try and pick spots with very flat even lighting, so the texture can be lit in the scene.

Then there's UV mapping.... eh! Another can of worms ;)

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