Graphics In Secondlife

One of the good things about PSP is that it has a whole bunch of extra dialogs meant just for photo correction. They can however, easily be applied to SL snapshots to make them clearer. Consider the following two snapshops (reduced and cropped for size):

Elsie Dancing:


Elsie in cap:


They were both taken at night at a favourite hangout. Both might be improved by a little fixing.

PSP has a button called One Step Photo Fix. Press this and PSP will run a series of filters and corrections on the image. On RL photos the results are generally good.

Elsie dancing after 1SPF:


Elsie in cap after 1SPF:


In SL, the results vary depending upon the original snapshot. As seen above, the first snapshot is improved, but the second looks washed out and flat. When in doubt, a simple Undo (Ctrl-Z) will undo all the changes.

You can also use the Smart Photo Fix dialog box to tweak things as well:

Smart Photo Fix Dialog Box:


There are controls with this and you can try and preview as much as you like. Shadows and highlights are important in SL snapshots as often there can be a lack of contrast between the subject and background.

Another handy dialog is the Auto Color Balance. This is mostly used to correct photos taken under neon lights where the color is affected by the light. The following shows the dialog box:

ACB with Elsie dancing:


ACB with Elsie in cap:


As you can see, playing around with the slider and tick box adjusts the colours. The first example doesn't add anything to the image, but the second adds a hint of colour with the following result:

In addition to the above, there is a whole range of more manual tools to be found under the Adjust menu. Brightness/Contrast are the most obvious, but Backlighting, Highlight/Midtone/Shadow and the others all have their uses. It's easy to experiment and Undo is always available for mistakes.