An upgrade to the earth is needed!
Stone, in its current state, is shaded in a rather mediocre manner.
The most common arguments for this is to keep it dull for the player, that way they wouldn't be focused to much on it, to help contrast it against the much more visually impressive ores that surround it.
This texture hasn't been updated since it was added, aside from possibly getting a color change for its outline and dirt surrounding it.
This could be improved, and could look more visually impressive (Or at least, up to date)
Here is an example of a modified sprite, with the exact same amount of colors as the original, sure, it's imperfect, but I hope it should give an idea as to what improvements I would think could be made to what could be the most often seen tile in Terraria.
This is a slightly less modified version that retains more artifacts of the original.
Both of these images retain the same palette of the original, and also benefit from being more soft on the eyes, they have less dark spots and use more of the midtones, thus keeping them both well shaded and a basic block that would contrast against the ores.
How would other textures that are connected to stone benefit from this?
This example is the emerald, multiple changes were made for the point of example, the notable changes being much larger clumps and with a shade that merges the green and grey to create a nice, natural looking blend. This is an example of course, I'd expect the developers to go for something much sharper, as that is the methods used for all sprites in this game, not much anti aliasing in tiles such as this.
I feel that this kind of change would be optimal to make in the upcoming update (As of now) seeing that it is bringing many visual upgrades.
