Uploading Second Life Snapshots

After reading several blog posts about Second Life residents having difficulties with images, I thought I might offer some tips.

Snapshots taken in Second Life are saved as a bitmapped file (.bmp), which are very large and not welcome in blogger.com. In the case of this sailboat picture, the original is 2.08 megabytes.

Here is how I have been able to get images from Second Life into the EdGames blog.

First, I take a snapshot and save it to my desktop. Next, I import the picture into an image editor (I use Photoshop out of habit, but other image editors are fine), and do any editing, such as cropping or resizing. Finally, I convert it to a JPEG (.jpg) file, which is compatible with the EdGames blog. If you are using Photoshop converting is easy, as all you need to do is choose “Save for Web” from the file menu, then select the lowest resolution that looks ok. Of course, higher resolution equals bigger file sizes. The file size of the .jpg sailboat picture is only 38.5 kilobytes, which is a substantial reduction from the original file size.

After the snapshot is converted to a .jpg, I click the picture icon in blogger, and choose medium for the picture size. Then I browse for the .jpg file on my desktop, and click upload. That has worked for me.

I used to work in a boatyard on Shelter Island when I was in high school, which probably helps explain why I am standing on this sailboat at least for this picture in Second Life.