Hair Fair 09: Tiny Bird

Blog readers always ask me for tips on enhancing Second Life photos with AI tools, and honestly I don’t think I’m very good at it. Still, I decided to dive back into Krea.ai and see if I could enhance my avatar with ultra realistic hair and skin texture. I’ve tried a few other AI tools, but I personally think Krea is the easiest.

Have you ever seen a Second Life ad where the face looks almost real and the hair texture is so good that it can’t be Second Life? That is usually AI enhancement. It can be deceiving, even when people say the product is untouched. Once you add AI, your eyes get tricked and the product does look slightly better.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Second Life has come a long way. My avatar has never looked better to me, but I rezzed into system hair and system clothes back in the day, and I think I was even wearing system skin. So maybe my idea of amazing is a little skewed, but I also think Second Life avatars have peaked. Can we even get any better?

I don’t know what process or tools other people are using, but I think the easiest way to add detail is to enhance with an AI tool and then blend the two photos in Photoshop. You don’t have to keep the entire AI generation, just blend enough so it still looks like your avatar.

AI tools are still too expensive. I like to play around with video generation and I can burn through a month of credits in an hour. I paid $10 a month to test different models in Krea, but you can use the free version too.

Even if you don’t love the deception of AI, it’s here to stay. I’m not encouraging anybody to do this, but I wanted to share since so many people have asked me for tips.