Knowing how to change the name of your Second Life snapshot files is vital to Second Life photography. When you’ve been taking snapshots of Egyptian pyramids in Second Life, for example, but then go to a club and take snapshots of dancers, it’s best to change the name of your snapshot files to relect the change in subject, but many people don’t take advantage of this powerful feature. Today you’ll learn how.
In previous articles about Second Life snapshops, we’ve discussed improving your Second Life Snapshots, using the Environment Editor to improve you snapshots (part 1, part 2, and part 3), and advanced snapshot settings. Today we’ll discuss naming the file that’s created when you select "Save to your hard drive".
If you’ve ever used the "Save to your hard drive" option when making a Second Life snapshot, you’ve used the Save option and know how it works. When you take your first picture and click "Save", a window opens in which you can specify the name of the file and the folder where it’s going to be stored. If you are taking pictures of Egyptian pyramids, you might name the file "Egypt". The computer will add onto that name the sequential number of the picture, creating a file name of "Egypt_001" for picture. Starting with the second picture you take, you won’t be prompted for the name of the file when you click "Save". The file will just be created automatically. All that will chance will be the number at the end of the file name: the second picture will be in a file named "Egypt_002", the third picture will be "Egypt_003", and so on up to your 999th picture.
But what happens if you take a dozen pictures of pyramids, you go to a club and take pictures of dancing. Unless the nightclub happens to be in Egypt, you don’t want your dancing pictures to be named "Egypt_013", "Egypt_014", and so on, but they will be unless you explicitly change the name. But how do you do that?
You could log out of Second Life and then immediately log back in. This will work – the first time you take a snapshot, you’ll be prompted to enter a new file name – but it’s unnecessary. You can accomplish the same thing very easily by using the "Save As" option. Don’t feel badly if you haven’t thought to use it. In the college and adult education computer classes that I’ve taught, I’ve found "Save As" to be one of the least appreciated features, not just of Second Life, but of computers in general.
Instead of logging out when you leave ready to leave Egypt for a club, just go to the club and start taking pictures! When you take the first picture and you’re prompted to save the file, don’t click "Save" Instead, click the little triangle that’s to the right of Save. When you click it, a drop down menu appears with two choices: "Save" and "Save As". It’s shown in the picture above. When you click "Save As", you ‘ll be prompted for a new file name. Now you can enter a name likc "Dancing". You already have a dozen pictures of pyramids, named "Egypt_001" to "Eqypt_012". If you simply clicked "Save" in the club, then your first dancing picture would be named "Egypt_013", but if you click "Save As" and type in "Dancing" as your file name, then your thirteenth picture (the first dancing picture) would be named "Dancing_001". Your next dancing picture will be "Dancing_002", and so on.
This is an extremely powerful feature. If you take a lot of snapshots, you’ll appreciate the difference it makes in being able to sort and identify your photos later.
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