Granted, in many cases this is preferable, as direct uploads from the snaps menu are limited to a max size of 512^2. But it's a bit of an extra hassle for anyone who is not that picky about the appearance of a profile pic or other pics that can be assigned to parcels or other features within SL. Attaching a snapshot that illustrates the forced aspect ratio. Funtionality is the same under all settings, leaving one to wonder why the settings are there at all, unless one remembers a time when they actually worked.

The custom setting DO continue to work under the "Save to disc" options.

Long story short, Second Life textures are powers-of-2 which isn't intuitive if you're new to computer graphics concepts. Historically, we got confusion/complaints asking, "I just uploaded a snapshot and it's not the same resolution as my screen actually is... why?" so then the response (from Lindens or experienced Residents) talks about common texture resolutions, like 512x512.

Of course, almost all computer monitors are rectangular, and constraining that to 512x512 (1:1) also messes up the aspect ratio. So instead of further complicating that, this change made it so "When you take a picture, you get what you see."

BUT... to complicate matters further, profile picture and other slots where you can drop an image have bizarre aspect ratios. Notice how in your profile, your 1st Life pic is square but... your 2nd Life pic isn't!

» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits#Textures

Cleaning this up – making it more consistent going forward – would likely involve breaking the appearance of older pictures, but as a trade-off, the path forward would be much easier.

AND FURTHERMORE... there are a number of other subtleties (referenced in this and other issues) which make the matter even trickier. That's why we're currently documenting the snapshot tools and all their functionality so we can hopefully improve usability.

Being a prolific photographer, I wish for options that are both powerful and elegant in the future.

Meanwhile, cleaning things up and having consistency in aspect ratios places like the profile window help.

My question is, how does limiting snapshot functionality benefit users? Was uploading full screen snapshots inworld taking up too many resources?

Because if there isn't a good answer to that, this is a feature loss. It also creates an inconsistency in that the "Current Window" size selection does not actually let you select the current window size.

But I DO appreciate the change here as an effort to give newer users more of a WYSIWYG experience out of the box. I would probably have preferred this set up if I were coming into SL as a new user today.

Though I would probably waste some Lindens mistakenly thinking that the "Current window" and "Custom" options that still show up in the "What size image do you need?" pull-down for "Upload a snapshot" pics actually did something. Those two options should probably either disappear in that setting or be greyed out and become unselectable, as has already been done with the "constrain selections" and "image quality" options that haze out in 10.20.11 now. It's not TOO misleading, assuming that users actually notice the available pixel selections under Width and Height.

Though I must comment that it was not until I started writing this that I realized the upload pic option would allow me to custom define an upload frame of 64W x 512H, for instance. Like I said, I stopped paying for direct upload snapshots months ago, so I rarely have reason to look at how the options are changing there.

Given that 1:1, 2:1, 4:1 (and 8:1) aspect ratios CAN be created in uploaded snapshot (none of which ratios I would ever use illustratively without cropping, nor would I ever recommend anyone else to use those ratios except when creating in world textures, rather than portraits and product shots) I do wonder whether you're not trading one source of confusion for another, perhaps? Granted, most new users (probably) do not have formal training in composition or other aspects of graphic arts, so this does seem like a reasonable way to simplify matters for those who might be challenged by the need to deal with converting aspect ratios and such when trying to make in world content for the first time.

But, given that my own workflow (and I tend to assume that of most competent content creators) dictates saving most pics to disk for external manipulation, clean-up or other processing... this IS probably the best compromise to serve a resident population with vastly different backgrounds, talents and competencies.

It would be nice to be able to save (offline) directly to other formats besides BMP and JPEG2K, as, for instance it adds a further conversion step whenever one wants to upload a readable example pic here on the JIRA and elsewhere. But that feature request is covered elsewhere on the JIRA.

Thanks again for trying to clarify the necessary compromises!

We are investigating a reversion of this restriction/change that appeared in the RC.