Skin Texture Issues!!

Hey you guys. Hey, I am making a skin for my Avi and have some really good skin textures to work with. When I am doing a close up of my Avi on my screen, I want to see at least a little of the skin grain that I have captured in the photographs. But, it seems like when I upload the texture map, I lose most of it. I know that SL only supports 512X512 (or maybe it's 1024X1024), but I don't know a way around it. I am making sure to upload them as .tga files and cannot retain the detail.

Any way around this? Compression? Anything? What's the trick, if there is one?

Also, one other question. Are there better skin templates than the stock ones that SL has when you want to wear and apply the textures? Can I make my own? Is it a pain in the butt? What software would I use? I have Poser, Photoshop and Bryce. I am noticing some imperfections in the way that the SL template lays (the seams don't seem to be straight). If it's not impossible, I would like to make my own. How do I do this? Or can you direct me to a site or tutorial that tells me this?

Any help would be very much appreciated!!!

You guys are the best! Thank you very much!!

At the top of this thread is a sticky-thread marked "Free Templates - CMFF FInal" which links to Chip Midnight's Templates. Also popular are Robin Wood's Templates.

You are never going to be able to show fine skin grain and individual follicles and such close-up detail, and if you could, nobody would ever see it anyway because nobody ever zooms in so much that one finger fills the whole screen.

512x512 is the maximum that your skin textures should be uploaded at; although the client will let you upload 1024x1024 all that will do is overload people's systems and cause their clients to lock up, so please don't. 1024 textures should be reserved for maps and animations where you're only showing slices of the texture at a time. (There's a sticky thread on this topic too.) 512x512 provides as much detail as is likely to ever be seen.