Category Archives: Photography VW

Optimizing Second Life Snapshots: Alchemy Viewer & Reshade Guide

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I don’t write often these days. A couple of things have inspired me. One is ValKalAstra posting an interesting image. You can see it here on the Second Life Forum or on Flickr. For me this was a ‘how did she do that?’

The Second Life viewers, the Lab’s and third-party viewers, have filters for the Snapshots. Those are easy to use. To change the active render one has to get into tweaking a huge set of settings. Not so easy. And the sort of wireframe look in Val’s image was something I know I could not do in Firestorm or Black Dragon.

For whatever reason I though this was done in the Alchemy Viewer. I didn’t know about Reshade. Reshade is an add-on app for video games. It used to add image filters to a game that does not have them. So, the wireframe looks of the image intrigued me. I though Alchemy had some new twist on wireframe mode. So… I got the viewer.

ReShade Image from Alchemy
Playing with ReShade in Alchemy Viewer

Alchemy Viewer for Second Life

Alchemy is a third-party viewer. You’ll find it listed in the SL Wiki’s list of Third-Party Viewers. See the Details.

I downloaded and am running Alchemy Beta 7.1.9.2492 (64bit).

Alchemy supports RLVa and uses version RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.5.0.2492.

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Flickr Changes 2022

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Today I saw a new thread on the Second Life Forum: flickr updates TOS… [sic] by JeromFranzic. So… what did they do?

I read a lot of the thread, its about 8 pages as I write this. But, the actual changes weren’t posted in the thread. So I went looking for them. The blog Glamour Sause posted New Rules at Flickr – What can you do? by Kess Crystal. She has a good take on what is happening.

The Email Notice… ?

Flickr has sent out an email. It doesn’t really notify you of the change. There is what I thought was a promo splash, Flickr Forever. But, no it is an article about a TOS change and more limits on Free Accounts.

The changes affect only those of us using a free account. The big changes are;

  • No Moderate or Restricted level images
  • Only 50 private images.
  • Only Safe accounts – if your account is rated Moderate or Restricted by Flickr you have a problem. Click for how to fix it.
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Second Life Photo Show Event

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If you do photography in Second Life™ or consider it screen captures then you likely want better images. Possibly you may even want to create impressive images and sell them as NFTs.

Focus Magazine is putting on the FOCUS Photography Fair. They are promoting it as; Poses, Props, backdrops, lighting, and more.

Promo Poster

Having been there I can say they have done an impressive show. I’ve found a number of things I did not know were available in SL. Some of these items make it so If you are not an SL builder you can still manipulate the world to make the images you dream up.

I have found posing hands in Black Dragon especially tedious. There is a Bento Hand poser at the fair. It does a great job of allowing me to easily manipulate hands. Yay! But, I have to do that before I start BD’s Poser. Boo! Still it helps.

There are a number of photo-studios you can buy.

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Photoshop 2020 June Update & Tips

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Adobe has released a new set of updates. For those of us in Second Life, there isn’t a lot to get excited about in this update. There is enough to be interesting.

I suspect the most useful update in Photoshop is to the Select Subject feature. Jesús thinks its better. The example used in the video… leaves me undecided. I’ll have to get some experience with it before I decide. I suspect he is right. And the Adobe examples do make it look better than Jesús’ example.

On to the updates…

Lens Blur – They have improved this feature too. I often use it. The viewer’s Depth of Field does some nice blurring on its own. While the viewer’s DoF is simple and more than adequate, Photoshop’s Lens Blur is awesome… and complex offering many controls.

If I think I want to blur a background, foreground, or combination of the two in a photo I’ll snap both a Color and Depth image. Then I use Lens Blur to get the look I want.

It will let you blur just background, just foreground, or some combination of both. One uses the Set Focal Point in the tool to select what is in focus. That selects a shade of gray in the depth map to consider in focus and progressively blurs other levels of gray as they go darker or lighter.

Watch this video to see a comparison between the old and new Select Subject and some other features.

Select Object– This is now a tool in the tool’s pallet. It is different than the Select Subject tool. Adobe explains the difference this way:

The Object Selection tool is useful when you only need to select one of the objects or part of an object within an image that contains multiple objects. While the Select Subject command is designed to select all the main subjects in the image.

From Adobe Make Quick Selections

I was annoyed that it was often hard to find Select Subject when working in an image. I had to select some specific selection tool to get access to Select Subject. The first thing I find when I go looking for this ‘Object’ tool is that I don’t have it. So, off to find out why. Adobe explains how to find it here.

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Second Life Photography w/Black Dragon & DoF & Photoshop

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This is a tutorial on how to use Black Dragon to capture DEPTH information for use in Photoshop (PS). The techniques can be used in GIMP and Paint.Net. The buttons are just in different places.

The reason you may be interested in using PS rather than a viewer’s built-in DoF is to get more control. Viewers tend to provide a perfect render of a scene. Our eyes pick up the texture and dust of real-life so a computer image usually doesn’t fit our experience of how the world looks. Making a photo-realistic is about adding the subtle noise of real life to an image.

Nal @ Port of Senses
Nal @ Port of Senses

This image raised some questions in the SL Forum thread How does your avatar look today? (About 1,300 pages) Mostly, I think, because I pointed out I did the Depth of Field out of focus thing using Photoshop with a Black Dragon Depth map.

Most viewers provide Depth Maps. You can create Windlight settings that will create a depth map too, but that is a PITA. It is easier to use a viewer that has the feature. So, Firestorm or Black Dragon or the Linden Default Viewer. I haven’t checked the others. I assume most have the feature.

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Second Life Images/Pictures

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The Lab has a very interesting image on display in  Home > Blogs > Inworld > Second Life Pic of the Day 02.06.2020. I found it interesting because of the avatar poses.

From Second Life’s Blog

Getting poses is sometimes hard. In some cases, one has to make their own. I suspect Madd Flair did some manual posing to get this shot. Or it could be built into the coaster, I have not checked. However, it looks very posed, unusual for built-in poses.

I doubt the image is taken from the Black Dragon viewer. Would be nice if they said. However, Black Dragon gives a ‘prettier’ render by default, thus my doubt.

From the How’s your avatar look today? thread Scylla Rhiadra spun off the thread Making Avatars Look Good in Black Dragon! Share Your Hints and Advice! (Link) This thread explains how people get those perfectly posed shots you have been wondering about.

NiranV the author of Black Dragon has been posting in the thread, so there is some good information and ‘how-to’.

The FaceApp and Second Life

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Browsing a Second Life™ Forum thread I was impressed with a photo by SL resident Opal Gustafson.

Opal Gustafson – The Smile

What a cute avatar (click to enlarge). CLICK… gotta like that one. A bunch of other people liked it too. Started a bit of a thing.

Seicher Rae saw it and commented none of her heads or AO’s had such a smile. Hmmmm… neither do mine. Seicher asked how she got the avatar to smile like that. The answer was FaceApp. The smile was made in post-processing, not in SL.

I have seen what I thought were SL avatars will big smiles. Even some profile pictures with smiling faces. Now I know where they come from.

So, what is FaceApp and where does one get it? It is an app for mobile devices. Google Play and Apple Store. Free and paid versions available.

If you know how to move images between your mobile device and your desktop the quick way to get these smiles is to put the app on your device and moves files back and forth. Continue reading →

Where is the Porn? Erotic? Just Sexy? A view from Second Life

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Whether in RL or Second Life™ people are interested in beauty and beautiful things. I am of the opinion SEX and the sexy can be beautiful… gorgeous, and/or stimulatingly erotic. Sex can also be crude, vulgar, and/or violent. While often being an expression of caring or love, flipping the coin over we know it can also be devoid of any caring for another and totally about self-centered gratification and control.

Gallant: Spring Romance (Photo 4)

Gallant: Spring Romance (Photo 4)

Whatever the case, it is hard to classify art as either erotic or pornographic. Those issues rage worldwide. You can decide what is which. I don’t care how you decide. Just don’t load your opinions on me. I just want to see what I consider titillating erotic art. Preferably without gallons of dripping body fluids. But sometimes that is just what I want. Continue reading →