How to put a pic in Picks

I've noticed that some people put photos of friends and things like that in their profile Picks. I can't for the life of me figure out how that's done, nor does Google reveal the secret. There seems to be only one option, to hit new, and that just creates a pick of where I am at the moment. Please tell me how this is done before I go nuts.

After you create the pick, drag the texture you want onto it.

Profile > Picks tab - ~16:9 (288x162 pixels)

If the original photo before upload has these proportions, even though the SL upload changes the shape, it will display correctly once squashed into the picks frame.

Just a note that if you wish to do picks of your friends and family to not create the picks somewhere you do not want people to go (ie, your home or like). Unless you do not mind people popping up unexpected at your home/favorite private spot/etc.

It is one of the reasons my own "friends and family" pick is set to Greenies. Anyone wishing to use it to drop in on me, will be eaten by a giant kitty. At Greenies. *mew*. Of course the gallery ones go to my galleries, because I do not mind if people drop by there.

TY for the warning, Lexxi. Great idea, to send people to Greenies.

And I can type my own text in and that's what people see, right? Rather than the Greenies description? How do I edit that little tab that sticks out to the left that gives the name of the pick? EDIT: I just figured that out for myself.

Best bet is to crop the pic to 288x162 pixels before importing, but then resize it to 256 x 256, just before you import. That will look a little distorted if you look at the texture, but will snap exactly to the right size in the Picks window.

Never let SL choose how to resize your images. It always does worse than any competent graphics program does at resizing images.

I made it 288x162, then SL squashed it and now it appears in my inventory as size 256x128 and looks fuzzy when stretched out to fit the picks window.

I tried your suggestion Ceera and I can't tell a diff between a 256x256 and what I uploaded before that SL "helpfully" made smaller. What a bizarre upload system.

Actually the reason for those sizes is so textures can fit efficiently in your graphics card memory, which comes in powers of two (128, 256, 512, etc). Back in 2002 when second life was first designed, graphics cards were much smaller than they are now, so making best use of the memory was more important.

Meanwhile, you can pre-crop your image at some multiple of 288x162, like
1152x648, so it will have the correct proportions when finally displayed,
then reshape it to 1024x512 for upload. By starting with a larger image,
you will not lose detail as much when its shrunk for display.

A Picks entry works just like your profile entry. You can change the title, picture and text. Not the Landmark, tho.

To change the photo, I usually just click on the picture and it pops up the texture select window.

You can change the landmark also. There is a "Set Teleport" or "Set LM" or whatever the button is called in the pick.

Unless they, LL, changed something. My picture of Mistress in my picks originally linked to Desperation Isle home, but I reset the landmark.

Save your picture in .png format with the largest resolution possible for a satisfactory effect in SL. SL tends to do its best at making uploaded pictures the worst quality possible, sometimes so blurry that you can't even make out the facial features.


That option doesn't work for me for some reason on non-regular viewers.

If for 'picked' you read 'dragged and dropped', this is a useful mnemonic for remembering the correct procedure:


Peter Piper picked a pic of pickled peppers;
A pic of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a pic of pickled peppers,
Where's the pic of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?