Need a little help here

So my walls in my home are a little bare. I didn't want to buy art because I have a fair amount that I've created myself that I thought I would just upload as a pic and put on a canvas and hang it. But when I upload its either way too big -- or, if I resize it in photoshop, it becomes all blurry. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

You can save it as a 24 bit targa. The image size should be 256 x 256 pixels so it loads fast in SL. 512 x 512 pixels is really the largest file you'd ever want to upload. The quality would be good but it would take ages to load on your screen in SL.

When you put the texture you've uploaded onto a prim, it'll stretch/shrink itself to fit the prim you've put it on. So it doesn't matter what size it is when its uploaded..

It does in terms of image quality and resolution. But yes, it can be stretched on a prim.

ok so it isn't doing that.

There is probably some element of the edit tool which you are not familiar with since this is your first attempt. May I suggest a visit to Robin Sojourner's inworld texture tutorial at Benten 18,99?

This is a link to the thread in the Design and Textures forum.
/109/61/53243/1.html

Yeah did that tutorial when I first came into game about a month ago. Prolly time to revisit it since I was hit with a lot of info at once then.

When I resize an image in PS, I tend to give it a sharpen just once. Really makes the image stand out better. Also in your edit box, make sure stretch texure is checkmarked, you can then resize the prim and the texture will resize with it.

Good points made concerning texture size/resolution. If an image is important to you, and will be mapped onto a prim surface larger than two square meters or so, you'll want to go with a 512x512 texture image. There is no benefit to anything larger than a 256x256 texture on smaller surfaces. Also, make sure to save the texture image out as a jpeg, unless you will be making use of the alpha channel (for transparency). Targa files are much larger, and take longer to load.

I like image sharpen in Photoshop too, but find that "Unsharp Mask" with Amount set to 50 is more subtle than full-blown Sharpen. Compare and see what you think.

Lastly, make sure you familiarize yourself with the Select Texture option in the SL editing tools, in case you want to map images onto a single surface and not all sides.

Ooh. A new Linden!

~Ulrika~

Ack! I understand TGA & BMP are uncompressed, so that's why they're huge. But when we upload a texture into SL, I thought SL automatically compresses the texture into the JPEG2000 format.

If we import a texture image saved as a JPEG image, wont it end up getting compressed twice, thus causing loss of image quality?

I've been importing everything as BMP & TGA to get the best image quality possible, and depending on the compression to be done with JPEG2000. Are these incorrect assumptions?

Right, all uploaded texture images are converted to jpeg 2000 format in SL, so your best bet for keeping the highest possible image quality would indeed be to save out/upload as .bmp or .tga. Targa being the default for images with transparency (and the jpeg 2000 supports the targa's alpha).

Brian

Hey Vivianne,

You may want to check this thread:

/120/99/61800/1.html

Scroll down a bit - I go into a lot of detail there about how SL handles images. It may help you with your planning!

Regards,

-Flip

Just want to thank you all for your help. Echo came and made sure I was on the right track and the info about the double compression is WAY helpful. I've been saving things as jpegs -- YIKES!

Anyway thank you so much.