How not to make a blurry profile picture

That is my question! I've taken a photo of myself and downloaded to my hard drive as a BMP. I've cropped it, resampled it (to bring it down to the 168x130 size), and saved it back as a BMP. But after uploading it and applying it to my profile, it looks nothing like the image on my hard drive. It looks like the photo was taken through cheesecloth, not nearly a crisp image as the BMP file I uploaded.

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you for your help.

Try saving as 24 bit TGA at 128 x 128 (or 256 x 256).

check out this thread

/327/70/215905/1.html

if you need help with a profile pic give me a shout and I will see what I can do to assist

First, I'm not sure where you got 168x130. By my measurements, profile pics are displayed at 178x132.

In any case, I'll explain the problem generally, then I'll talk about the specifics of what you did, and then I'll tell you how to fix it. Sound good?

OK, here's the general problem. All textures in SL must be measurable in powers of two, but out of shear lunacy, whatever [explative deleted] it was who designed SL's GUI way back when decided that things like profile pics, About Land pics, etc., should be all manner of arbitrary sizes. (My guess is it was probably a Web design person, not a 3D person.) So there are always issues making things fit.

As for the specific problems with your process, here's what happened. When you uploaded your 168x130 image, it was automatically resized to 128x128 (the nearest powers of two). Then, when you applied it to your profile, it was stretched back out to 178x132. Basically, you took a big image, shrunk it really small, and then blew it up again. Any time you do that, you're going to end up with a blurry, pixelated mess.

By the way, the 10x2 pixel discrepency between your measurements and mine is not a very large contributor to the problem, so don't get hung up on that. It's the fact that it went all the way down to 128x128 and then back up again that is the main issue.

So how do you solve the problem? Here's how:

1. First make your starter image proportional to the profile image size, but significantly larger. Instead of 178x132, go maybe two or four times that size on each dimension, either 356x264 or 712x528.

2. Before you upload, disproportionately downsize the image to 256x256.

3. Upload the 256x256 image, and apply it to your profile. This time, instead of stretching to fit, it will shrink to fit, which will keep it from blurring. The proportions will self-correct as the image is crammed into the window.


ETA: For best results, I would not recommend doing what was suggested in the thread Lea linked, which is to upload the image at an odd size. When you do that, SL then ends up resizing it on you twice instead of just once, and the results won't be very good. Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, or GIMP will each do a much better job of the initial resizing than SL will. Never, ever, ever, ever, upload anything that is not measurable in powers of two on both dimensions.

Also, the measurements cited in that thread do not jive with what's on my screen. I see the 2nd Life pic at 178x132, the Picks image at 288x162, and the 1st Life image at 132x132. I suppose it's possible things might have changed a little in the last 8 months since that post was written, but whether it has or it hasn't, the author's numbers are not currently right.

Not sure if these are definitive, but they match much closer to Chosen's numbers:(That wiki page is mostly Torley's work.)

I saw that in the wiki and noticed that it has some 133s instead of 132s:

Profile > 2nd Life tab - ~4:3 (178x133 pixels)

* Profile > 1st Life tab - 1:1 (133x133 pixels)

I did take the time to follow Chosen's instructions and now have a properly scaled, non-fuzzy profile pic. What I had before wasn't too blurry but it was stretched a bit.

rule of thumb you can always shrink a larger image and keep quality..

taking a smaller image making it bigger you lose quality because there are less pixels..

the only way save a larger amount of quality in the pixels if you want to compress the file and then stretch it later is up the bits per pixel

I haven't tried Gimp, but I do have Irfanview. I cropped the image to 4:3, did a disproportional resample (no "keep aspect ratio" using the slowest method to a 256x256 image, and saved to BMP. I also tried it with the "apply sharpen after resample" option and it did look better. I uploaded the BMP file and applied it to my profile, unfortunately it still looks blurry compared to the file I uploaded.

I tried resizing instead of resampling. I tried saving as TGA instead of BMP. None of them look any better. They're all blurry.

/me sighs

I've just checked your profile inworld, Veronica, and the pic looks about as clear as any profile pic gets in SL. The only thing I can suggest, if you want your face to look clearer, is to make it a more close-up shot. I suggest taking a high-res snapshot to disk (open the Advanced menu with [CTRL]+[ALT]+D, then check against High-res snapshot). Take the snapshot using the menu (File > Snapshot to disk) rather than using the snapshot button. This will give you a very large, high-resolution file to work with. Crop it as close to your face as you can, then do the resizing thing. See if that makes a difference.

This whole issue drives me nuts. The snapshot facility with all its convoluted options is just so damn confusing, and uploading profile pics simply shouldn't be so unfathomable!

If LL wants to know ONE thing they could implement that would please the greatest number of residents in one fell swoop, then making profile pics sizes/ratios ALL THE SAME for each tab would surely be a wonderful place to start.

I've found if you sharpen the image before uploading it, it will then soften once uploaded (due to compression) but tends to look pretty much the same as it did before sharpening

Just my 2 cents worth. Instead of using the snapshot option, I hit Prnt Scrn instead. Then just paste into Photoshop CS3. Just be sure to hide your avatar name first and any other unwanted info. The image is clearer and the resolution given for mine is currenty at 1316x842 pxls for the profile pic before I uploaded. I'm sure it could be narrowed down a bit to reduce the slight distortion but it is minimal. It does give you a very clear and crisp photo for ur profile or to be displayed on large screens ingame. On top of that, you don't have to intterupt yourelf from what ever it is you're doing in SL to take the photo.

Also yes it is better to go BIGGER first, and let it get shrunk down. Just keep that in mind when you're adding anything to your picture. For some it may seem over kill, but I recommend allowing yourself some extra size rather than tryin to cut it exact until you're more familiar with how it works.

I'll second what Pringles said. Do not use the snapshot function. There's almost never any need for it, unless you want to do ultra hi-res shots for print or something. Otherwise, OS screenshots are the way to go, always.

In Windows, the shortcut for full desktop screenshot is ctrl-printscreen, and the shortcut for an active window screenshot is alt-printscreen. Hitting either shortcut will capture an image of whatever you're currently looking at to your Windows clipboard. Then simply paste the clipboard contents into a new image in any image editor. Photoshop, PSP, GIMP, even MS Paint, whatever you want, they'll all work.

If you're on a Mac, it's cmd-ctrl-shift-3 for a full desktop capture to clipboard, or cmd-ctrl-shift-4 to capture just a selected area. I don't know the commands for Linux, but I'm sure they exist.