[ d u b r o v n a ] style: Second Life PROFILE PIC

[ d u b r o v n a ] style

PROFILE PIC

Welcome to the [ d u b r o v n a ] style Second Life Guide to Profile Pics.

Your profile pic is important because it is the image that defines you when other residents aren’t immediately around to see you, and it represents your main (or dominant) manifestation.

The two most asked questions about profile pics in Second Life are:

1. What should my profile pic dimensions be?
2. Where can I get my picture taken?

In this guide to profile pics, we tackle both and add some helpful hints along the way. Our recommendations:

1. What should my profile pic dimensions be?

Easy Answer:

• Any image that is scaled to a 4:3 ratio.

How to do it:

• First of all, you need Photoshop or a similar image-editing program. It doesn’t need to be too horribly fancy to pull this off:

1. Take a photo of your avatar from within Second Life, or pick an image you’d like to use as your profile picture.
2. Open the image in Photoshop or a similar image-editing program.
3. If your program has a cropping tool, crop your image to the general area that you want to use.
4. Find the image dimensions in pixels. In Photoshop, you’ll go to Image->Canvas Size… and choose to view the dimensions in pixels.
5. Decide whether you want to retain the image’s HEIGHT or WIDTH.
6. For this example we will chose to retain the image’s HEIGHT (to retain the WIDTH, just reverse this step). Take the image’s HEIGHT and divide it by 3. Add the result to the original HEIGHT and assign that number to the WIDTH. For example:   

• You have an image that measures 1102×810 pixels, and you want to retain the HEIGHT of 810 pixels because you don’t want to chop off the top or the bottom of the image.
• Divide 810 by 3: 810/3 = 270
• Add 270 to 810 (the original HEIGHT): 270+810 = 1080
• Your new width needs to be 1080 pixels
• Crop the image to 1080×810 pixels. This will give you a perfect 4:3 ratio and your profile pic will show up as expected within your Second Life profile.

2. Where can I get my picture taken?

There are a number of Second Life photographers that will take a profile picture for you for a nominal fee. However, we recommend taking your own, as this gives you full control over your profile pic and you can change your photo as many times as you like.

A neutral or non-landscape background is the standard for profile pictures; This allows others to focus on you and eliminates any competitive elements in the background, as well as giving you more control over the look of your profile pic.

Fortunately, and not necessarily known by most people who could use it, there are a number of free photography studios on the grid. Now, you have the take the photo yourself, but you can use the Profile Pic-centric backgrounds and lighting studios for free. We recommend:

 

• The Doors of Perception | Visit In-World Location
• Editor’s Choice: MC FREE Photography Studio | Visit In-World Location

 

Use the following [ d u b r o v n a ] style tips to get the best profile pic you can:

 

• When using free professional photography studios, take some time to get to know the equipment. It’s an awful shame to find out your perfect background and/or pose was only a few clicks away the whole time.
• Choose your background and position your camera to your desired profile picture area first. Use ALT+Click/Drag to reposition your camera, and ALT+CTRL+Click/Drag to orbit your camera for some fine-tuning.
• After you have set your ideal positioning, set your graphics options to the absolute maximum that your computer can handle (from with the Preferences menu).
• Once you’re ready and all textures are loaded, press CMD+SHIFT+S on Mac (or CTRL+SHIFT+S for PC) to take a snapshot and bring up the snapshot HUD.
• You can re-take your photos as many times as possible. We recommend saving your photo to your computer so that you can do some editing before paying the L$10 the upload/save the image to your inventory.
• Save-As a .jpg file at maximum quality (Do not “Save For Web & Devices”).
• Upload/save your image to your inventory, edit your profile from the Edit menu, click on your profile pic area and choose your new image!
  •   
    

    A perfectly proportioned profile pic with some professional retouching.