Want to Take Great SL Images? Get Mr. Weaver's Phototools!

This lushly textured and evocative image, "human beauty", was shot in Second Life by William "paperwork Resident" Weaver (click here to embiggenize), and made entirely in-camera, with no post-production effects. How? Using a tool made to work with the Firestorm third party viewer, created by Weaver for virtual photographers like him: I'm talking about Phototools with Windlight Plus for Firestorm 4, which you can get here.

Weaver is a rising star in virtual photography, creator of utterly artful images like this, and, he tells me, "While I appreciate people who are good with Photoshop and after effects, I enjoy working with the limits of the viewer. And in order to do that, I modded it specifically for creating images." It took a lot of work to make it, he tells me, but "it was completely worth it." Here's why:

"It just puts ALL of the graphic settings Linden Lab hid in the debug right on on menu so you can manipulate the image just like you would in Photoshop. It also reformats Windlight menus to conserve screen space, and I rasied the limits for some setting so you can get new effects with the environment. Brighter starts, faster moving clouds and water, and I added camera controls all in one place, along with fine tune slider controls for the 3D mouse. Finally, it has extensive Tool Tips descrbing in detail what each setting does. That took a loooooooooooooong time to put together because the wiki for Linden Lab is outdated and limited (it was helpful though, I learned a lot)."

And now you, oh SL photographer, can gain from what William Weaver has learned: Go here for more info on the Phototool, and donwload it there too.

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Comments

[Seymore Steamweaver]

that video demo looks so great, but I can't seem to get it working on mine. I'll try again later.

[Archangel Mortenwold]

Great if you use Firestorm and can actually get that viewer to work. What about the majority of SLers who still use Phoenix?

[Indigo Mertel]

Write your own, @Archangel...

[Seymore Steamweaver]

okay, update. Must have been too impatient earlier. I skipped over basically the first part of the installation instructions. Works excellent and very fun wobbling all the sliders and do-dads.

fun stuff.

[foneco zuzu]

Preferences are just that, preferences, any can try to do same for other viewers of their choice!
And i bet soon some other Tpv will have some like this incorporated!
Still a waist of resources, to do for such lame low and to much used viewer, much better to use Niran's and work with it!

[makeyourownthen]

Instead of prattling on about how it doesn't work with your chosen viewer, how about saying: Nice job!

These were created and shared freely. I installed Firestorm just to give them a try. Nice job indeed. I really have no patience for entitlement minded whiners anymore.

[Bumble Skywater]

One of your complaints, foneco is that Firestorm is used too much?

Definitely comes across as an immature comment. Do you not eat food or breath because too many people do that as well?

A viewer choice is just that, a choice. The creator of these tools uses Firestorm, so he made them for Firestorm. Sorry you have to entertain the idea of LOWERING yourself down to our level to use something as novel as a bunch of glorified preference sliders.

Paper, you can't please everybody. Don't even try. Make it for yourself, and do your best.

[Karma]

I am with Bumble. Quit whining. I am a regular user of Niran's and Exodus, both of which i find extremely reliable and offer great graphic modification similar to this. However, i am definitely going to install Firestorm and give this a try.
Archangel you state the fact that people are using an outdated viewer as if it is a good thing?

[Blowfish Ezrameth]

pretty!
http://bayimg.com/aABmDAaeH

[Archangel Mortenwold]

Phoenix is not an outdated viewer. Despite what many, even its own developers, claim it is fully up to date and in compliance with Linden lab's terms of service. It simply has a superior user interface, runs better, and is more stable than Firestorm, which is why the majority of SLers still use it over Firestorm and the default Linden Lab viewer.

All I asked was what about the majority of users who still use Phoenix. Great for you Firestorm fans that you get a nifty new toy to play with, but really, I fail to see the benefit in a product that caters only to a fraction of the grid, and a snobbish one at that.

[jjccc coronet (@JJcccART)]

I tried this out recommended by one of the best photographers in sl and its really cool it does alot of cool stuff but it does have glitches and some features overide things making regular settings go a bit wierd. i would try it out but there are things that dont need to be there. i removed it because the camera view cross hairs were so big it took up half the screen

[Bucky Barkley]

I will definitely check it out. Something that drives me batty is so-called "photographers" in SL that basically quick-snap a flat image in SL, and then photoshop the hell out of it to try to fake shadows and depth of field. That's not photography, that's painting! Learn the camera!

Thanks much William Weaver for getting this going.

[Metacam Oh]

Phoenix is outdated and people need to move on to Firestorm. Its like complaining that you cant see the latest web pages because you refuse to move on from Netscape.

[foneco zuzu]

Good news, not only this wonderful tool works on firestorm for SL, but also on Open sims!
Even better news, I believe it will be easy to integrate it on other viewers of choice!
Most excellent news, the author is a Gentleman and that makes it even more worth to give it a try!

[foneco zuzu]

Ho and btw, I have a feeling that I didn't made myslef clear enough!
Firestorm is a SHIT viewer, personally and only personally, due to the problems i havw with it, ONLY ON SL!
It works flawless on Open sims grids and I can't wait to use the V5 for Open Sims!
But it is a shit for Me in SL, cause it does not allow me to cross more then 4 sims without a crash!

[Quan Lavender]

Don't miss his show inworld 'build 010': http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Shekhawati/215/28/35
Click The TP board at the landing point.