picture resolution

just a quick one.
I see some of the photos on peoples profiles are quite rubbish. how do i get a snapshot ,either off my hard drive or from the screen, that will look good in my profile. I am not vain just want to do my GF justice.

make sure to turn up your graphics settings in the preferences... turn up all the graphic details, and enable bump/shiny and ripple effects. click snapshot, choose the resolution (the higher the better), and save to your hard drive...

I fail to see how setting the resolution as high as possible will help with the itty bitty profile picture. The other suggestions are good; however, Most of the really good profile pictures I've seen have been "photoshopped" and then uploaded.

Crank up your on-screen graphics detail, and turn down your draw distance, if you're doing a portrait. You want to make sure your graphics card is actually drawing a good image of the person to begin with. For example, if you take a pic while their clothes look fuzzy to you or while their prim hair's texture hasn't yet fully rezzed, then the pic's still going to be bad, even if saved to your hard drive.

I save my best pics to my local hard drive, which generally is set to save them at 640 x 480 resolution. Now, this is FAR more than I need for a good profile pic! But when I shrink that to something more rational in Photoshop, my graphic apps anti-aliasing will make it a far sharper looking pic than a 512 x 512 in-world snapshot.

I have found that 128 x 128 is plenty for a profile pic. Keep the initial aspect ratio as you add any text or do any clean-up, then adjust the "Image Size" to 128 x 128. This squashes it a bit sideways, but the profile will streach it back by the same amount. Save this as 24-bit TGA, and import it.

If you are doing art for a classified ad or a profile pick, export to hard disk and crop it to a 2 to 1 ratio - twice as wide as it is high. Save it in a similar ratio, like 256 wide x 128 high. Ad and "'picks' images are shown larger and in somewhat of a 'wide screen format', as opposed to profile pics.

Thanks for all the advice, enough to keep me occupird for a couple of night.
Del

On the visual side instead of the technical, may I suggest thinking like doing RL portraits?

Turn so the AV is lit from the front side. Many profile pics are dark and faces are in shadow. You don't want them facing the sun entirely though, or they'll appear washed out or flat.

You can change the sun position (sunrise or sunset under world menu) or use in game lights too.

Lastly, use CTRL-0 to zoom in instead of the standard wide angle view. Do you want to be seen in that little view, or be just a tiny spec?

I'll chime in with my pet peeve. Yes, you have terrific washboard abs, yes your 937 flexi-prim dress is perfection, but in that tiny little photo frame, it all disappears.

I suggest you create a tight, tight close-up of your mug for your profile shot. Crop in on the top of your head even. It can get your personality across much better--whether you're looking directly at the camera, wistfully off into the distance, upwards like the hero you are, or head tilted coyly like the flirt you want to be.

The only time a full body shot might be in order is if you have an unusual furry or mechano AV, or those washboard abs are really, really the best things in SL.

I take a lot of screen shots for SecondSeeker.com. I always shoot at 1600 x 1200. Yes, that big.

And yes, I turn all the graphic sliders up and I often have the draw distance up also, so the background is rendered nicely.

Performance is not that bad. Not great, but not bad.

The large size lets me crop in Photoshop.

I publish at 400x300 pixels.

What amazes me is the number of stall owners who do really awful product shots. They take a screenshot with 3x2 aspect ratio (or wider) and then paste it onto a square prim with no rescaling, and the result is all distorted.

I think, if they take that little attention to detail in their sales promotion, how good is the product going to be?