HELP! Profile photos: pixel ratios & JP2... :/

Hi all.

I'm fairly well versed in computers and my graphics program, enough to take a screen shot of a target then open it in PS and crop it to see what size it is.

Problem I am running into is this... I know (or so I think) what the ratio is of the profile pictures is. I take screen shots and then crop to that size and save as a TGA and upload. The problem I am having recently is that upon uploading, the text I am using gets blurred slighly. I am not sure if this is because my pixel size x size is off and it's distorting it, or if it's because of the TGA -> JP2 conversion...

I was wondering if:

1) Anyone knew what the pixel x pixel area of the photos in the bio's were, more specifically the main photo as well as the "PICKS" photo. The numbers I have are:
Main Bio Picture = 178 * 133 ( and the odd number to me doesnt really sit well)
Picks picture = 278 * 162

Both of them look really well, but when I look at the TGA and then I look what it's uploaded as, there is a WORLD of difference. More notable blur, which is why Im blaming my sizes being off.

2) I'd like to get my hands on a JP2 plug in for PS7, but I dont have the original disc with me. ... I dont even know where it is anymore! ( yikes... thats actually going to bother me now!) but if someone knows where to get one or has one even, I'd be grateful. I want to blame the TGA -> JP2 as well. If I could work with it as a JP2 then I could better see what it'd come out... or so I'd imagine.

Thanks for the help and advice.

You're right that the profile pic sizes are really weird. There's not much you can do to overcome the blurring since SL will resize every picture you upload to the nearest power of 2. For example, 178x133 will come out either 128x128 or 256x128 (can't get inworld to check right now, of course, but it's one or the other). In other words, it's gonna get resized once through the upload and then a second time by the profile window. After that it's gonna look blurry. There's really no way around it.

What I do for profile pics is work at the target size. It's the only way to make sure the proportions come out right in the end. To me, the proportions are more important than the blur. The blurring is annoying, but it's the lesser of 2 evils. To have my well-proportioned av look stretched and distorted would be the greater evil in my opinion.

For text, just make sure the font is big enough that it will be legible even when it's blurred a little. You'll find that sans serif fonts work a bit better for this purpose than fonts with serifs.

As for the JPEG2000 conversion, that's going to affect it a little as well, but not much. My experimentation with JPEG2000's so far have yielded pretty good looking results, even low quality settings. However, combined with all the resizing, it's certainly not going to help.

Unfortunately there's just not much we can do. It was really sloppy of LL not to make the profile pics power-of-2-friendly when they knew perfectly well that the rest of SL is entirely power-of-2-dependant.

I suspect what you're doing is creating the images to those sizes, then uploading. Uploading will convert to a powers of 2 size on each side (I suspect 128X128 and 256X128 for those numbers). This distorts things. Putting the image in the various places distorts them again, hence blurriness.

Can I suggest you make squared off pictures, maybe at 256X256 or 256X128 (that's closer to the final aspect ratio after all). SL should then load these without distorting, and you've saved one of the places blur enters into it. It will won't be perfect of course, but shouldn't be too bad.

Not sure about J2k for PS7 - I'd suggest cruising adobe's site it's likely to be around as a free download if it's there.

Just had a few more thoughts. First, I wouldn't recommend "squaring off" arbitrarily. You'll lower the blurring a bit, but it will also cause the images to be out of proprtion when placed in the profile window. So you're kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's question of whether you prefer a less blurry image that appears squashed or a more blurry image that's correctly proportioned. There's no good solution either way.

Something I just thought of though is that 178x133 is a ratio of about 4:3. There are certain sizes SL will accept as 3 times a power of two. 768 is one of them, but with SL being down right now I'm not sure what the others are. A 1024x768 image theoretically would yield very little distortion, when downsized to 178x133, but it would also take forever to load. If SL will accept a more reasonably sized 4:3 proportioned image, something like 256x192, that would be a great solution. It still won't be perfect, but it'll be pretty close. When SL is back up, I'll experiment. I don't think I've ever tried uploading an image that size.

As for the 278x162, that's a little more challenging. It's a roughly a 5:3 ratio. With a max of 1024 per side, a minimum of 32, and limitations on what SL will accept inbetween, it's not easy to find numbers that work. 1024x384 is a possibility. I think I've uploaded 384's before, but I'm not certain. Again, when SL is back online, I'll experiment.

I'll let you know what I find out.

I use 512x384 for my profile. This ensures that it gets sized down about 67% with slightly less blur (this is very slight). 256x192 achieves almost the exact same result (it appears to be the same). I don't know quite what happens on the server side during conversion, but I suspect it is some sort of bicubic interpolation (not quite as refined as Photoshop's), judging from the results.

178x133 (final size)
256x191.281 (.719 margin of error in pixel information)
512x382.562 (1.438 margin of error in pixel information)

Another thing that you will notice is that the first viewing of your profile will be much crisper than the final look. I always log out, log back in, and take a peek.

Just my 2 cents

fight the fuzz !
sharpen 40%

Thanks, Nam. You saved me some experimentation. Good answer.