The Art of Creating Pictures in Second Life

The following is a transcript of "Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life," a podcast from QuickAndDirtyTips.com. The audio program is available via RSS feed here and at TheStreet.com's podcast home page.

Will Ross here, welcome to The Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs.

Now, I'm not a fantastic builder in Second Life (which can be attested to by anyone who was around to see the monstrosity that was my enormous in-game clown statue "Clownous the Mighty"). That gives me a little bit of a dilemma as your in-world guide, since it means I'm fairly clueless on how to assist you with one of the coolest features of Second Life, building your own stuff. However, I can at least help you take your first baby steps into object creation by teaching you how to make one of the most popular home decorations in SL, a picture.

The first step to making an in-game photo to be displayed in your home is taking a snapshot. This part is easy, just use your camera controls to zoom in on whatever it is you want to take a picture of and then press Control + Shift + S, or choose "Take Snapshot" from the "File" menu.

You'll have to pay 10 lindens to upload the photo, and then it will be placed in the "Snapshots" folder in your inventory. Don't forget to name it!

The next step is to make a canvas for your picture. This part is also really easy, too. Under the "Tools" menu, go to the sub-menu, "Select Tools," and choose "Create." This will bring up a little building menu that you'll use for the majority of your object creation. It should automatically choose the "Create" option on this menu, but if it doesn't,it's the fourth icon from the left at the very top. It looks like a little magic wand.