A method and apparatus is disclosed for conveying and applying texturing instructions within a very low speed, or bandwidth environment, or where storage capacity is limited; the invention and of particular use in image displaying mobile telephones (16), but also applies to image data storage (184, 186, 188, 190, 192) and use on the Internet. Image texturing is defined by a texture string (198) defining a seed number (200) for pseudo random generation of z axis displacement of pixels from an initial surface, a roughness value (202) for the surface, warp function values (204, 206), distortion function values (208, 210), texturing cell style and size data (212, 214) colour information (216, 218, 220, 222, 224, 226) and indication of where the texture is to be used (228). Cells (20) tile and wrap.