Second Life offers infinite opportunities to create stunning images, and there are plenty of expert photographers who make full use of this. However, once those photos have been snapped and tweaked in various graphics software, uploaded to Facebook, Pixel VR and Flickr, what then?
One possibility is to use these Second Life photographs as desktop wallpaper, perhaps on your own computer, or to share with others. One clear advantage of sharing is firstly its a nice thing to do, and secondly it helps to promote your creativity as a photographer as well as other skills you may have.
When sharing images as wallpapers there may be some concern about people misrepresenting your Second Life photos as their own, but this is easily dealt with by adding a signature or watermark to the image, and a text document outlining a license agreement can be included with the image download. Creators could also include in the text document information about what they do. (A PDF document can include live links to a Marketplace store or website as well as an SLurl to an in-world location).
Desktop Wallpaper Software
Changing the desktop wallpaper on a PC is very straightforward, but there's no reason to stick with just one image. There are a number of software options that will automatically change the wallpaper at prescribed times, so any number of Second Life photos can be used in rotation on the desktop.
Possibly the best known wallpaper software is Bionixwallpaper, and whilst it has a lot of bells and whistles, there are a number of downsides to it. The most prominant of these is that, when it starts for the first time, it will grab every image on the PC and use them as wallpaper before you have time to stop it and create a designated folder. To find out a little more about Bionix for yourself, there's a short intro page.
A more lightweight option is Any Wallpaper. Whilst its free to download and use there is a donation button for those that feel the developers deserve to be rewarded for their work. When Any Wallpaper runs, a window (top image) will open where a folder containing wallpaper images can be selected. Clicking the Options button will open the window above where you can change the duration of each wallpaper, and the order they'll appear in.
Where To Share Second Life Wallpapers
Second Life wallpapers can be shared anywhere online where photos are usually uploaded. This includes Flickr, Pixelvr and Deviantart among others. There are also numerous Facebook groups devoted to Second Life photography, so perhaps these could also be used to share wallpapers. (If enough interest was expressed a group dedicated to Second Life wallpapers could be created on both Facebook and Flickr).
In the spirit of sharing I've created a zipped folder to download containing the ten Second Life photos on this page. They all have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and are Jpegs. Feel free to use these images, but do not edit them or pass them off as your own, although resizing them to fit your screen resolution is fine.
The folder is stored on Google Drive, so you can be sure it doesn't contain anything nasty. Click here to download the folder, and enjoy using any or all of the images as desktop wallpaper.
The folder is stored on Google Drive, so you can be sure it doesn't contain anything nasty. Click here to download the folder, and enjoy using any or all of the images as desktop wallpaper.
