Question about uploading

So im a new resident and ive got a few questions concerning a new venture i may undertake.Im a semiprofessional freelance photographer,translated this means i work partime and do photography parttime

I would like to sell my photographs in Second life.I would buy some land in a location where residents frequent and build a gallery to display my pictures more or less in a museum setting.Ive examined the cost and i beleive i can do this effectivley.

My biggest question is this:Can i upload my pics to be displayed in a museum setting?Will the resolution be affected?Is it even possible for me to do this?

I need some kind of answer in that i wont even buy land if i cant.

Ceasar,
Welcome to Second Life!

Here's a couple of thoughts:
1. YES, your pictures can be uploaded with excellent detail. Go to some inworld galleries and take a look. Try the gallery run by Esche Snopes. He has multiple artists on display, including usually some photographers. YOu'll be able to see the sort of resolution available.
Also try 'Doubledown Tandino' who takes inworld photographs. and a new gallery at Diamond Heaven club has some nice photos.
2. Then read up on how pictures are stored in SL. they are in TGA format (not jpg or gif). And their resolution is a major factor in download speed. You should think about having previews and final sale versions. (a longer discussion.)
3. There are many good galleries, and small shops available in SL. You don't need to buy land, especially to start. And there's lots of free advice and tools and programs available---even simple vending machines are available for free.
4. You might read up on Watermarks...Your picture is stored as a texture. And textures in SL are capable of being copied <albeit with a fair amount of difficulty>.

Yes you can though there is a bit of debate over selling Real World items in SL. You would have to talk to LindenLab directly about this.

Technicals:
Yes you can upload your images, it cost 10L$ per image, or about 0.04$US (4 cents). Images when they are uploaded are resized. If the length or width is not equal to a power of two, that dimension is made the next smaller power of two. so 1024x768 becomes 1024x512. The SL client will display images with dimensions larger then 1024 as 1024. So a texture that 2048x2048 will display as if it were 1024x1024. If your image is smaller then a power of two, you may want to resize it up to that power of two to maintain quality.

Sterling is actualy wrong about how they are stored, the client internaly compresses images with JPEG2000 (though there is no way to import JPEG2000 compressed images). Image formats can be imported as JPEG, BMP or TGA. If the import type is JPEG then it will use Lossy compression. If you import with either BMP or TGA then lossless compression is used. It behooves you to convert your images to BMP or TGA before upload if they are JPEG.

I'm especially embarrassed to have forgotten about BMP which is the BEST way to preserve your picture integrity (subject to the limits of the compressed JPEG2000 format.)
I'd formed the habit (from alpha textures, I suppose) of always saving TGA for upload to SL.

The point about selling RL work in SL is also interesting. Were you planning to sell ACTUAL RL photos via Second Life? With a delivery man showing up at my RL door? If so, I can see where an in-world interface to an 'Art Amazon' like store might be an issue with the Lindens.
I've bought photos in SL from RL photographers, and I hang their photos on the walls of my SL house and office. I'm not aware of them selling RL items via SL, but what's to keep me from contacting them offline (outside of SL) and doing so? If you'd like to talk to them directly, Ceasar, I'll send you an IM.

The proportions issue (powers of two) is true. And I find it all pretty confusing. But, when you 'paste' your uploaded texture back on a prim, it'll sort itself out.

( Use a PRIM as a sort of 'picture frame'. Take a cube, stretch it to the size and proportions of your picture, and then Texture it with your previously uploaded image. The texture will 'stretch' to cover the Prim, no matter what its size or shape.)

Again, I've glossed over a bunch of details, but I think I'm close.

So a bunch of the details I glossed over are explained in THIS thread:
/109/0b/150122/1.html

The issue is the proportion of your pictures in RL versus SL's propensity to make vertical and horizontal measures be quantities of pixels in powers of 2.

So if you had an 8x10 photo, for example, to prevent SL from compressing it to a square, you might want to put a 'border' on the picture. As a 10x10, it'll upload into SL as a perfectly square photo. (lets say as 2048x2048 pixels). When you apply this texture to your 'picture frame prim', you'd offset the texture to trim off the 'border'.

The result should be a SL picture, of 8x10 proportions, with the amount of compression in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions the same.

I re-read what I just said. It sounds really complicated. Its not. Practice and don't worry.
If you can even SEE distortion in the final inworld picture, come back here and re-read.