Photo settings

[Schatzi Timmerman]

A simple question.

What are the best settings or proper size to use when uploading a picture?

[Doc Carling]

Well, that's not to answer in a few sentences. The Second Life wiki gives some useful hints. Perhaps you want to take a look at it. 🙂

Images and textures aspect ratios

Edited September 6, 2020 by Doc Carling

[Nalates Urriah]

For image quality there are a number of things to consider.

Max image size in SL is 1024x1024. Anything larger gets down sized by the uploader and it is not anywhere near as good as Photoshop or GIMP's resizing.

SL uses the JPG2000 format for image storage. It is a lossy format. Uploading JPG images causes a double loss. TGA and PNG avoid one loss process.

JPG2000 images require power of two dimensions; 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. Other sizes are resized down to the nearest power of two dimension and there is some loss of quality.

The size image you want to use depends on how it is to be used. A 1024x1024 image targeted for a fingernail texture is highly wasteful. Consider how many pixels something will normally use when on screen. A fingernail will normally use less than 100x100px. When zoomed in on it might use 256x256 and possibly 512x512. How often do you zoom in on nails?

So, there is no single BEST size.

SL has a reputation for being horribly laggy. That is generally considered to be the fault of content that is not optimized, i.e., nails using 1024 textures.

[LilithLamia Vortex]

I literally just researched all of this today but for a much different reason! Had to solve an age old SL mystery.

I would say best bet - decide on where you want your image to go in SL (profile pic, marketplace store, classifieds, etc) - basically where are you going to use it?

Once you know, then look up via that Second Life Wiki he gave you, to see what the Aspect Ratio is for the place you want to put it (profile pics are 4:3 ratios).

Create the  base file in Photoshop or Gimp - whatever you have - using the aspect ratio of choice. Make sure the largest side is no more than 1024 in size. Copy/paste the full size image you took, into the template you just made and arrange as best you can. It might crop some, depending on how your original image was shot.

Save out as either a JPG, PNG or TGA, depending on your use. Then upload.

You should be good to go!

 

[Chic Aeon]

On 9/6/2020 at 7:02 AM, Nalates Urriah said:

Max image size in SL is 1024x1024. Anything larger gets down sized by the uploader and it is not anywhere near as good as Photoshop or GIMP's resizing.

While that is generally true, there are some viewers that upload 2048 x 2048 as I have had them in my inventory (a gacha key which I was VERY happy WAS 2048 as it had about forty items all very tiny.   My guess is that it was uploaded with  Blackdragon.   There ARE actually a few good uses for that ability (putting all the textures for one house in one texture for one draw call would be one) but since we already have way too many heavy textures I am certainly not advocating any change. 

 

And to the OP - you can upload a 2048 file in Firestorm (and I am pretty sure the LInden viewer) and ti will get automatically resized to 1024.   A few of us did some tests on this maybe a year ago and found that in most cases the viewer uploader did a better job of "resizing" than our graphics software.  (This is somewhere on the forums but I have no idea where. Do your own test to see the differences. )   So now I just make the texture the proportions I want it (under 2048) and let the viewer upload and resize.   So for a profile photo for Firestorm I would make it 600 x 400 ish and let the viewer turn that into a 512.  Note that in some cases (viewer related) people will see your upload differently. Some viewers use  square and others rectangular -- so no perfect answer on this. 

 

IF you are making photos to send out with products then I would suggest using a SQUARE format like 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024. That way when opened the aspect ratio looks correct :D.