SL Photography

It's the easiest thing to point your cam at something in SL and take a pic. However if you are going to get the best quality possible then there are a number of ways you can guarantee the best results. The info is based on the Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2 (1102). What follows is not a set of 'right answers' but a summary of the information I've learned over the last few years. I hope it's helpful!

Open the Advanced Menu and make sure 'High-res Snapshot' has an X beside it. While you're there you can also get rid of the irritating shutter noise by clicking 'Quiet Snapshots to Disk'! If you don't have the Advanced menu press CTRL ALT D. It will appear to the right of the Help Menu.

Click CTRL P and open the Graphics Tab of your Preferences. Tick the Custom box to open up the dialogue fully.

What's possible here will depend to some extent on your graphics card and some options may not be available.

In general terms you will get the best results with everything set as high as your graphics card will allow. To set everything at maximum quality just hit Ultra! For full details of all of the options see the Wiki article on the SL website.

Windlight offers a multitude of possibilities for lighting your pictures.

To use Windlight settings go to World Menu >>> Environment Settings >>> Sky Settings or Water Settings. Both of these open up dialogues with lots and lots of options. Way too many to explain here so my suggestion is to play with them and see what happens!!

You will also need to enable Atmospheric Shaders in the Graphics Preferences to get the full effect.

There are 3 ways to 'take a picture' in SL:

• use the Snapshot feature (see below)
• press CTRL ' - this takes a picture immediately according to the settings in the Snapshot dialogue
• take a screenshot using the PrintScreen key on your keyboard or using your own screen capture software

This article focuses on the Snapshot feature.

SL uploads images according to a set of rules. Your uploaded image will ALWAYS be resized to a combination of the following numbers of pixels: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024. In other words if you are uploading an image which is 700 x 300 pixels, SL will resize to the nearest matches in the list, in this case 512 x 256. The biggest image which SL will support is 1024 x 1024 pixels.

Bearing this in mind you have two options:

• resize an image in your photo editing software to conform to the nearest values in the list above
• upload the image as it is and allow SL to resize the image for you

In both cases a non-standard image size will result in a squashed or stretched image. That's easily fixed in SL by putting the image on a prim which matches the original proportions of your picture.

For the best results, bigger images eg 1024 x 1024 pixels will give the best quality. However these will be slower to rez so a judgement has to be made according to the likely use of the image. If it is to be displayed on a large prim or megaprim then the bigger the better! If it is to be used on a small prim then you can use a smaller image without any noticeable quality loss.