Iris Wants to Know: What Are the Best Tricks in Your Second Life Snapshot Editing Toolbox?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

A few months ago fashion maven and legal eagle Vaki Zenovka shared a work-in-progress shot on Plurk. It was a shading layer for a Second Life snapshot she was editing at the time, and it looked like a drawing in itself -- stark whites and blacks were layered like conte crayon on a grey sheet, which would then be overlayed on the original snapshot to give it significantly more oomph than it would have on its own. I typically spent more time fiddling with color balances than with hand-shading my pictures but ever since then, whenever I'm playing around with my own SL snaps in Photoshop, I can see Vaki's WIP shading layer hovering in my mind, pushing me to add just a little more highlight here, a little more shadow there...

Everyone has their tips and tricks, and the more I think about Vaki's the more I want to know everyone else's, too. Me? My go-to Photoshop move is to take the sharpening tool to the fine details of the face. With a very light touch, I like to sharpen the brows, the lips, and most important of all the shine in the eyes. Sharpening these little details, as long as you're careful not to overdo it, can really make your avatar's face pop. It works just as well for details on your outfit, too. Just remember that this technique can be a little misleading to the viewer, making them think textures are much crisper than they are, so you absolutely, positively should not use it on pictures intended for reviews.

What clever little methods have you picked up along the way that make your pictures stand out from the crowd? Share your favorite snapshot-editing techniques in the comments below!

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times, and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Magnet Homewood]

Good luck with that! When some people charge 1000L and above for a one-avatar picture, and others take 5000L+ for lessons, I don't see them offering any tips here, although there are some very kind people out there, so who knows?

Some come across as very helpful, saying just ask if you need any help, but then when you actually push them for the details, they clam up real tight!

[Paypabakwriter]

I'll bet if you look through Strawberry Singh's Challenge memes you'll find a lot of generosity is giving out tips on a variety of "profitable" endeavors in SL.

[Kerryth Tarantal]

I do very little retouching of images in outside graphics programs because most of my pictures are for my ads, and I want people to see my products as they are. For the same reason, I have to be very careful of the color balance and shadows in lighting the scene and keep visual elements very minimal. I spend a lot of time composing and lighting shots inworld, including Windlight tweaks and everything in the Phototools toolbox. I take the highest resolution snapshot I can. Then it's all about cropping the photo for composition, balance, movement and negative space for typography. If I were a taking photos for the sake of the images, I would go about it very differently, but learning to crop an image effectively is something that can improve anybody's work.

[colleen Criss]

Strawberry Singh does have excellent tutorials, many bloggers do actually.

Before I even take a photo into an editor, I fuss with poses and adjusting them,sets/backdrops or favorite sim to shoot in I rely on the viewer to do most of the work and my best secret weapon for great photos is the LUMIPro HUD. http://lumipro.blogspot.com/