Biological hard and soft tissues are architectured or multiscale materials that hardly fulfil the definition of representative volume elements. Their behavior strongly depends on porosity that spans from nanometer to millimeter length scales as well as an anisotropic layout of their constituents. They are made of widely available materials, partly with inferior properties. Yet their composition and arrangement enable disparate material properties ranging from strengths of over 700 MPa to deformability of over 200%. Image-based tissue mechanics is an excellent tool-box to unlock such properties and study their dependence on aging and disease.