Tactile and Visual Texture

Tactile texture is texture that can actually be felt, whereas visual texture is the impression of texture is purely visual and not physically felt.

In this still life painting, you can tell what the subject matter would feel like just by looking at the reproduction in this image. Although you cannot actually feel the smoothness of the cloth, you can tell it is. This is an example of visual texture. I obviously cannot give an example of tactile texture because you would not be able to feel the original image.