Abstract: Image-based modeling techniques permit the creation of visually interesting geometric models from photographs. But traditional image-based texturing (IBT) techniques often result in extracted textures of poor, uneven quality. This paper introduces a novel technique to improve the quality of image-based textures. We compute a simple and efficient texture quality metric based on the Jacobian of the imaging transform. We identify the correlation between the values of the Jacobian metric and the levels of an image pyramid, allowing us to formulate a novel texture synthesis approach which operates over textures from 3D surfaces in a scene. Our technique allows the creation of uniform, high-resolution textures, relieving the user of the burden of collecting large numbers of images while increasing the visual quality of image-based models. This improved quality is important to create compelling visual experiences in interactive environments.