what format shold i have when i upload a profile pic?

[Nevyn Hammerthall]

what format should i save my edited picture in to make it look good when i upload it, so it wont look stretched?

[Rolig Loon]

It depends on the viewer.  When I'm uploading for Phoenix, I make my  profile pic with a 4:3 aspect ratio, squish it horizontally to 3:3, and resize it to 256 x 256 pixels.  When it's displayed as a profile pic in Phoenix, it's stretched back out to a 4:3 aspect ratio and looks right again.  If your'e not using Phoenix, you can double check the aspect ratio by opening your own profile (or anyone else's) and measuring the dimensions of the pic on the screen with a ruler.  You'll only get a rough idea, because the actual displayed pic's dimensions will vary from one person to the next, depending on the dimensions of their monitor, but you can get reasonably close.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

The format really doesn't matter for a profile picture.  JPEG, or any other lossy format, will show some loss in quality though.  Any lossless format (TGA, PNG, or BMP) will produce the best quality.  I use either TGA or PNG for such uploads.  But if a slight loss of quality is unimportant JPEG is fine.

[Innula Zenovka]

There's a useful table of aspect ratios (it depends on the viewer, as Rolig says, and also on where you want to put the texture).    There's also a very helpful -- well, I found it so -- tutorial on how to tweak aspect ratios of your images in Photoshop or Gimp  before uploading them.

[Dora Gustafson]

Aspect ratio doesn't matter in the web profile
The small profile picture is a cut square from the picture you upload
When you click on that the full picture is shown with the aspect ratio it was uploaded with

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Are we talking about aspect ratios or formats?  I read the question to ask about formats........aspect ratios are entirely different.

[Rolig Loon]

It's hard to tell, Peggy. The OP used the word "formats" but then asked about stretching, which has nothing to do with formats. Given the context of profile pics, in which the common concern is about stretching because the aspect ratios are screwy, I flipped a coin and went with aspect ratios. But you may be right. In any case, we covered both bases.

[Chic Aeon]

For format you need jpg or tga files. As someone mentioned the aspect ratios (height to width) vary within viewers. This means that there is no perfect aspect because some people will see it differently than you do. Viewer 2 style software uses 1:1 square ratio so 256 x 256 would be best as it will load quickly. If you want to split the difference between the two viewers so that it looks pretty good in both *wink* then you could make the with a bit larger  - say 290. Your choice. I suggest, if you have graphics software that you resize your photo down to the 256 ish size and then sharpen as the upload process will always blur the photo some.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Have a look at Torley Linden's web profile page here http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Web_profile

Please note you cannot use TGA format as has been suggested in this thread. PNG or JPEG would be ideal.

After you click Edit Profile, you can click Choose File to select an image from your hard drive. Web-standard formats are supported — which means no TGA, which may be jarring for you used to uploading those into the Viewer, but there are free image converters like FastStone Image Viewer.