Uploading to secondlife

Now that you have your photograph – you might want to upload it to SL – so you can show it off on your profile – or maybe display it in your home. You need to know about file types and file sizes.

SL supports three different file types : jpg, png or tga. The different files have different uses and in some cases some are better than others.

• jpg : Great for photographs or textures in SL. In general JPG files can be resized a lot without nasty pixelation or jaggies.  I would recommend that you do the resizing in GIMP or similar – and not in SL – stretching images in SL is not the best feature.. JPG files don’t support transparencies (which you might want to use in some places in SL – buildings, clothing etc) – if you need transparency – use TGA. Also because of how JPG files are compressed, they are not good for diagrams – use PNG or TGA for these.
• PNG : These are good files for retaining details (such as in diagrams), but not as good for photographs, especially if you planning to resize them. at a later date. PNG files do support transparency but under some cases, SL seems to have an issue with PNG files with transparency.
• TGA : Like PNG files they are uncompressed, and they support Transparency (i.e. you can make them see-through; and SL has less problems with TGA files. They are regularly usedwith clothing and building textures (windows for instance), and would be cool with some types of picture.

Now that you have chosen your file type – what size should you use. You need to remember two key facts :

1. SL limits image uploads to a maximum of 2048 pixels in each direction (horizontal and vertical). Any file bigger than this will be rejected – files are then resized to 1024 on its largest size.
2. SL will resize any picture to the nearest power of two – i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 , so a 27 x 62 picture is resized to 32 x 64, which means that it will be distorted.

It is critical that you are aware of the re-sizing the SL does – and how it might distort your picture for you. I would suggest you plan your picture sizes before you upload into SL, and then – if you are unsure use the Temporary upload feature to see whether the uploaded image is right in world.

When i upload pictures in SL :

• Edit them in GIMP (add signatures, borders etc).
• Scale them in GIMP so that the biggest dimension is 2048 pixels – typically  this makes a picture 2048 x 1453.
• Upload them in SL –  it is resized to 1024 x 1024.
• Display it on a prim or frame which honours the original aspect ratio – 1.4 to 1.0 in the case of a 2048 x 1453.

In Firestorm the upload function is in the Build menu.

Have fun – and get uploading. Don’t forget to contact me and tell me about the pictures you have taken.