I can work quite easily with procedural and image maps within the Node Editor’s “Shader” tab, which includes connecting textures (eg. Noise) to the shaders. So seeing as you can do a lot of things with textures under the shader tab, what is the purpose of the ‘Textures’ tab?
which includes connecting textures (eg. Noise) to the shaders
the texture input node in the Shader nodes needs existing textures, which you either create in the Texture properties or in the Texture nodes. The last one can be used for more complex textures. So shader nodes can use textures as input, but cannot be used for created them.
So in Cycles, if I create a texture under the Textures tab in the Node Editor, how do I then input that texture into a shader under the Shaders tab? I tried using the Image Texture node inputting into a Shader but the texture I created does not appear as in the menu of image textures even though imported bitmap images do appear in the menu?