Second Life Profile Pictures Cropped and then Stretched

[Amethyst Starlight]

I noticed my Second Life profile picture can appear stretched, depending on how I view the profile. To test this, I created a 4:3 aspect ratio picture of a blue square on a brown rectangle.  

 

I uploaded this image to my webprofile on my.secondlife.com. The image is cropped to produce a square thumbnail (the blue square). Clicking on the blue square shows the full 4:3 image with the two brown bands at either side. That's fine. That works as expected. 

The original 4:3 image:

The generated 1:1 aspect ratio thumbnail:

 

However, if I view my profile via this link  http://world.secondlife.com/resident/f43cae8e-7fa4-4912-83e2-754c590d3587    ... you can see the uploaded image has been cropped to show only the blue square, which has then been stretched to 4:3. The lack of the two brown stripes either side indicates the servers are forcing the cropped square image to 4:3 rather than using the image I actually uploaded.

 

Is this a known issue?

 

Edit: I am unable to upload images to the forum for some strange reason, so I have provided links instead.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Amethyst Starlight

[Ceka Cianci]

I believe for an image to work in the forums, the URL needs to start with https: rather than http: If I remember right..

[Rolig Loon]

35 minutes ago, Amethyst Starlight said:

Is this a known issue?

Yup.  Profile pics have been that way since Day One.  It happens because images uploaded to SL are required to have pixel dimensions that are powers of 2 ( so you can have images that have 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1024 pixel dimensions, but not any others).  If you upload an image with other dimensions, the uploader automatically resizes them to the next lower power of 2, so your lovely profile pic gets squished.   One way to beat that is to stretch your lovely photo in GIMP or Photoshop before you upload it and then let the uploader squish it to "normal".  That takes a little math to figure out, but it's not hard to do. 

[Amethyst Starlight]

15 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yup.  Profile pics have been that way since Day One.  It happens because images uploaded to SL are required to have pixel dimensions that are powers of 2 ( so you can have images that have 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1024 pixel dimensions, but not any others).  If you upload an image with other dimensions, the uploader automatically resizes them to the next lower power of 2, so your lovely profile pic gets squished.   One way to beat that is to stretch your lovely photo in GIMP or Photoshop before you upload it and then let the uploader squish it to "normal".  That takes a little math to figure out, but it's not hard to do

 

I rescaled the test image to 1024 pixels (wide) and again uploaded it to my web profile on my.secondlife.com, and the image is still cropped and then stretched when viewing the profile in the other format (Legacy?). Could it be a conflict between the two profile systems? 

The pictures are not getting squashed, as you can see from how the brown bands at either side of the test image are removed to show only the blue square in the center. That blue square is then stretched to 4:3 in the other profile system. http://world.secondlife.com/resident/f43cae8e-7fa4-4912-83e2-754c590d3587

I should mention I do not upload profile pictures inworld to my inventory and then make that my profile image. I upload my profile pictures directly to my.secondlife.com by editing my profile.

 

I attached the original profile image I uploaded to my.secondlife so you can compare

[Rolig Loon]

Ah, yes.  That's probably the problem.  It's been an age since I did much with my own profile photo, and the only time I ever look at profiles is in world.  I forget that photos added directly from the web aren't subject to the same pixel rule. 

[Bree Giffen]

I think you have to upload a square image where your face looks squashed vertically. Then SL will stretch out that image horizontally in the profile pic and your face will look normal.

[Orwar]

22 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I think you have to upload a square image where your face looks squashed vertically. Then SL will stretch out that image horizontally in the profile pic and your face will look normal.

   Yes, if you want a texture to have a different ratio than 1:1, you'll need to let SL squish it at some point or another.

   Profile pictures in particular are a bit of a divisive issue as Firestorm users' see profile pictures in 4:3, whilst the standard viewer/web profiles display them in 1:1, so whichever you go with, someone is going to see them distorted (not sure about other TPVs, I think Black Dragon also uses 4:3 displays on profile pics but it's been a long time since I used it to check).

   Personally I go with 4:3 as I'm a Firestorm user, and rather than letting the viewer first squish and then stretch the picture (first for the upload which must be 1:1, and then for the 4:3 display) I go with squishing my uploads to 1:1 before uploading them (people say it's the better way to do it, but I never actually did any testing to confirm it).

   The same applies to other texture displays as well, however you can do a little bit of a work-around with prim and mesh faces by offsetting a non-repeating texture, so if you want a painting in, say, a 16:9 format, you take that image and add a new base layer beneath it and increase the canvas size until it's a 1:1 display with the 16:9 layer on top of it (preferably centred or offset to either edge), then use the in-world build menu to offset the display (i.e. if you're using a 4:3 picture laid onto a 1:1 texture and have a 1,000 x 750 mm surface, make it repeat once on the width and 0.75 times on the height, then use the offset parameters to centre it to the picture part of the texture). This doesn't work with profile pics, though (unless I've missed something capitally!).