better pictures

[royb232]

i have seen people that have edited there pics they have taken to make them look realy good, was just wondering how i do it, do i need to download something?

 

[Ariel Vuissent]

You need some kind of photoediting software: GIMP is a good free one. Some people use photoshop, some use Corel. From there, play with light settings, special effects, watch some tutorials if you can. Good luck! I'm sure others will be able to tell you a lot about this. You could also try posting this in the creation>photography section of the main forums.

[Ceera Murakami]

If you save the photo to your computer, you can get a better picture resolution to begin with than an in-world snapshot, which is limited to 512 x 512 maximum size. When you save the photo directly to your computer's hard disk, it costs nothing, and the resolution can be as large as your window on your screen. (For example, I just took a snapshot with a 1600 x 1127 resolution.)

That image can be saved as .png (default), .jpg or .bmp format.

Now you can open your favorite graphics program, and edit the image to your heart's content. Photoshop is wonderful for this, but rather expensive. GIMP is free, but relatively hard to use.

When you are done, remember that the image when you import it back into SL has to be proportioned in steps that are powers of 2, between 2 and 1024. So the X and Y dimensions can be any combination of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, or 1024 pixels. It is to your advantage to use your graphics program to scale and crop the image to those dimensions, before importing. 

You can also use the graphics app to streach the image to fit those limits, and then compensate in-world by squashing the image on a prim. For example, take my 1600 x 1127 snapshot. I could resize that to 1024 x 1024, or to 1024 x 512, or to 512 x 512, or to 512 x 256 - import it into SL - and then apply that to a prim that is 1.600 Meters by 1.127 Meters in size, and the image will appear with the same proportions as it did in the original snapshot. Uploading the image from your computer to use in-world costs L$10.

[Charolotte Caxton]

That was a really awesome explanation, Ceera, especially about the off numbered images. I take photos and when I uploaded them, I noticed that the photos were squished. I did just as you suggested, if I had a 1077 dimension, I made it 1.077. Thanks for the affirmation for me and for the explanation for those that don't know!

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Stretching the image on a prim does reduce some of the quality of the image. A way I found ot minimize that degradation is to set the image size to the nearest power of two for each size using my image editor (GIMP). You know the largest size for any image upload is 1024 pixels for the largest deminsion so using the largest deminison of the image you are editing (say Ceera's 1600 x 1127) set that to 1024 pixels......keep the aspect ratio for the image and let the 1127 side be what it will be when you reduce the 1600 side. Then uncheck the keep aspect ratio to size the smaller side again.......and size to the nearest power of 2. You now have your image sized to a proper size for SL with the minimum amount of distortion induced by stretching or shrinking using a prim. Use the same as Ceera outlined in her post. It saves a little bit of pixelation caused by stretching the image after it's been uploaded.

 

And for Ceera.........I believe the smallest power of 2 the SL software accepts is 8 (not 2). Anyone would be hard pressed to see 8 pixels in SL, let alone 2).

[Charolotte Caxton]

I think I got that, basically, if I have a 1077x989, for example, make the 1077=1024 and let 989 be whatever? Then when I upload, i will have a 1024x512 texture, yes? but I can then size the prim to be 1024xwhatever989turnedinto, right? orrrrr, are you saying make the image 1024xwhatever989turnsintototheclosestpowerof2(like if it turned into 967 make it 966)? if so, wont that reduce and or distort my image before it ever even makes it into secondlife? I am not questioning you, I know you know what you are talking about, I am just trying to make sure I am understanding correctly. Thanks!!

[SMolina]

Hi Roy,

  What exactly are you trying to do to your pics? You can edit using any number of online tools for free. Personally I prefer Lunapic and/or photobucket. It just depends what your goal is with this. Lunapic lets you crop, edit, rotate, add text etc. Pretty much most of what photobucket does except photobucket lets u add decorations and stuff. Not sure how helpful my answer is. but I thought I'd try. Good luck! If I can help just let me know.

 

~Molina

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Hahaha.......yeah, basically exactly what Ceera and you do except that I do as much of the resizing using GIMP instead of relying on the building tools and SL software to arrive at the final resolution. When you resize, keeping the aspect ratio enabled, the other deminsion will resize to something other than the larger demension. Uncheck the aspect ratio to get that demension to the closest power of 2 using your editor. Upload at that size the fine tune the size using the prim editing tools. Many times if you upload the image as a square when the final image is going to be a rectangle the side that will be the smaller demension in the final image will be slightly more distorted........it might not be noticable but then sometimes, depending on what the image is, it will be quite noticable. Anything you do with resizing of a texture or image using the SL tools or software is not going to be as good as if you do as much as possible before you put it in SL. Keep the resizing to a minimum is basically what I'm saying.

 

My brain is not working real well tonight........so I"m sure I'm confusing a little. I probably should have kept my fingers still. It's just a minor "improvement" on what Ceera and you do anyway.

[Charolotte Caxton]

No no, makes perfect sense and I am glad your fingers tippity typed away

 

I completely understand and agree, the less resizing sl does to the image, the more true to your work it will be, therefore giving you a final product that is what you had envisioned and created before upload. Way cool! Again, thanks