where do i change the preview aspect ratio of my pictures?

[Tristan Fraker]

where do i change the preview aspect ratio of my pictures?  the default is always a square with the picture getting squished.  i'd like to change it so the default for all of my pictures is 10:7 or 4:3 or something that resembles the in world shot.  thanks

[Rolig Loon]

If you are talking about the aspect ratio in your profile or in group profiles, you change those in Photoshop or GIMP before uploiading them to SL.  If you are talking about the aspect ratio on prim surfaces in world, you select the surface and then use the dimension settings in the Texture tab in your editor.

[Alwin Alcott]

 

after upload in firestorm you can simply pull the texture window to the size you want, or use the drop down menu at the bttm for the ratio

 

before upload, the preview upload screen can't be changed as far i know.

[Nalates Urriah]

I find your question a bit ambiguous. From the asnwers I take it others do too.

Whichever viewer you are using, you can set the size of the snapshot when you are taking it. At this point ratio is NOT a criteria. You can use any raio you want. You just have to decide on the image dimensions.

Ratio only becomes a problem when you want to display the shot in-world. We normally apply the image/texture to a prim. So, if we capture the image as 1024 wide by 512 high (2:1) then we need to make the prim 2m wide and 1m tall (also 2:1). The prim can also be 4m x 2m, 8m x 4m, etc. all being 2:1 ratios. The displayed image will look like what you captured, no proporational squish or stretch.

While it is possible to use any ratio you want, the quality of the image when dispayed in SL can degrade if you don't also consider how the SL system stores images. The system will only allow power of 2 sizes... meaning 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024. The system maxs out at 1024. Width or hight can be any of these dimensions. Larger images are down sized and pixels discarded, which translates to lower quality.

If you use other dimentions, like 1024x450 (2.75:1), the system will store the image as 1024x256 (4:1) or 512 (2:1)... I'm not sure which but, I suspect SL will always down size. The problem with that is you lose pixels. So, if you size your prim to hold the 2.75:1 ratio you captured to make the image 'look' right the system has to 'interpolate' pixels and the SL system is not very good at doing that... loss of quality, fuzzier image.

I think most of us take whatever image we want at whatever size we happen to like at the time. Then for those images we display in-world we use GIMP, PAINT.NET, Photoshop, or some other image editor to crop the image to a power of 2 size and the ratio we want.