Squished snapshots

I have a widescreen monitor. When I preview a snapshot (before taking it), the little preview window shows the proper widescreen aspect ratio.

But when I take and upload a snapshot, it comes in at a square 256x256, and the image is squished.

I've tried different settings in the snapshot window, but haven't come up with the magic combination.

How can I keep my snapshots from squishing?

LIndal, this is a tricky thing. I advise you take a screen-capture, open it in PS, and then upload it. Ctrl-Shift-1 gets rid of then entire UI...

This way you're uploading as a texture, and the aspect ratio will be bypassed.

Aspect ration and snapshot squish is always a problem.

Snapshots saved to SL are always a square aspect ratio, 512 pixels by 512 pixels, regardless of the aspect ratio of the window you run SL in. So you have two choices, if you want to retain what you see on the screen, without distortion.

1: Run SL in a square window, like 800 x 800, and then take the snapshot. The resulting pic will be exactly what you saw. Square.

2: Save the snapshot to disk. This will make a copy of the picture, with the original aspect ratio intact, exactly as you had it displayed, on your local computer's hard disk. It also gives you the choice to save a better resolution. You then need to edit the picture in a graphics application to add white space or a frame of some sort, or to crop it, so you can import it back into SL with dimensions that are a "power of two" in each direction. (32, 64, 128, 256. 512 or 1024). So you could manipulate it to be a 512 high by 1024 wide image, and then save that as .tga and upload it back into SL. The end cost is the same as the snapshot, L$10. But the result is superior.

Thanks, guys. That's basically what I've done in the past when I just HAD to have an accurate picture...but it's so many extra steps.

The "snapshot" function is so dang convenient, I was hoping there was some way of using it without all the intermediate Photoshopping steps.

If you have 'distorted' snapshots, taken for convenience sake, you can export them and fix the aspect ratio in a graphics app. Just resize in the graphics app to the same aspect ratio as the window that you took the picture in, and proceed from there as if you had saved to disk initially. The down side of that is that you'll be limited in resolution to 512 pixels or less in each direction.