Uploading photos to SL

[Madison10292018]

I want to apologize in advance if this has been asked before but I have a question about uploading photos.

Sometimes when I upload a photo from the real world the picture gets distorted. Basically it will make a person look fatter than they really are. Other times this does not happen. Has anyone else seen this? I've tried messing with the different picture settings but it just changes the overall size of the picture without correcting the problem.

Does anyone know why this happens? Is there any way to fix it?

[Charalyne Blackwood]

The viewers will show the picture in a preset ratio. If you select "Unconstrained" you can move a corner around to make it as close to proper as you can. Typically I'll rez a prim and edit it to the same size (IE, a 1287x902 image would be put on a prim that's 1.287m x 0.902m), then adjust the prim to the size I want. I hope this made sense and helps some

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

You can find an explanation for why your images appear distorted on this wiki page Texture aspect ratios but the quote below sums it up.

Quote

All Second Life textures are constrained to powers of 2. This means if you upload a texture that's 257x514, it'll be resized to the nearest powers of 2, or 256x512.

If the image you're uploading isn't at the correct aspect ratio (e.g. 1:1, 1:2, 2:1, etc.) then it will get resized to an aspect ratio which most closely matches its current proportions, so if you want your image to appear correctly when viewing it from your inventory you will need to resize and crop (or add borders to) the image first so that it's the correct size (if you plan to display the images on objects in-world then it doesn't matter quite as much since you can simply resize the object the image is displayed on to change the aspect ratio it appears at).

ETA: If you just want to view the images yourself and don't mind manually resizing the window then the solution @Charalyne Blackwood suggested is definitely easier!  The only reason to edit the image proportions first is if you're worried about how the image appears by default to people you may give copies to.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Fluffy Sharkfin

[Charalyne Blackwood]

Fluffy said it much better! *awards Fluffy a trophy and a delightful decorated canister fulla tiny mershmellaz*

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

2 minutes ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Fluffy said it much better! *awards Fluffy a trophy and a delightful decorated canister fulla tiny mershmellaz*

Mmmmmm ..... mershmellaz!  

[Madison10292018]

Ok that helps. Thanks to everyone for the advice.

[Nalates Urriah]

It very much depends on where you are viewing the image and how you uploaded it. If it is on the forum, in-world, or some where in the SL support stuff - like profile images. Where you upload it, on one of the web properties or in-world via a viewer, makes a difference.

In-world images are often referred to as textures. These 'textures' are applied to prims. Depending on how you apply the texture and size the prim you can get lots of distortions.

In the support stuff, like profile images, the particular cases requires a specific ratio 4:3 or 16:9 or 1:1.... You can generally look up the requirements in the SL Wiki.

[Anicha Heartsong]

Tip: when I upload photos, I will often include the aspect ratio I've used as part of the name of the file. That way, if I give it to someone, they will know what aspect ratio to use to view it correctly.