Avatar Help

[Tower of Iron Will]

Hello All,
I am new to CC and while I am not new to lego, I am new to taking pictures of them. I look and see all the nice avatar pics I decided to make one of one of my figs but can't get the resolution right. Better put, I took some pics earlier but when I tried sizing them down they became out of focus. My camera is a 5 mega pixel if this helps. Does this require photoshop (I tried using Kodak software)?
Thanks in advance,
Tower

[Bruce N H]

Hey ToIW,

Welcome to CC. I don't know the Kodak software at all, but yes, Photoshop works quite well for making avatars. If you don't have Photoshop, Gimp is a free program that I use and find works just as well for all of my purposes. Kevin wrote an article on downloading and using Gimp. I don't recall the exact size limits on avatars, but mine is 100x100 pixels, so that's probably about the right size.

Bruce

[BuilderQ]

[An avatar's] width can be no greater than 120 pixels, the height no greater than 120 pixels, and the file size no more than 20 KB.

[Luís]

I actually have the same problem, I take several pics but their always 36 kbites and stuff. Do you guys know how to reduce the file size? That's why after three years I have no avatar. If anyone would like to do one for me, please PM me.

[BuilderQ]

I actually have the same problem, I take several pics but their always 36 kbites and stuff. Do you guys know how to reduce the file size?

The file size of .jpg images is determined by the degree of compression. Some image editing programs allow you determine this with a "quality" control when saving images (lower quality means smaller file sizes). Alternatively, try saving your images as .gif files; they probably will be small enough.

[kelderic]

Alternatively, try saving your images as .gif files; they probably will be small enough.

Changing to a .gif will not reduce the size, it will only change to file type and reduce the picture quality. For all windows users, the easiest way to reduce file size is to open the picture in MS Paint, click Select All from the Edit bar, and then drag the outline of the picture inward, shrinking it.

See here. (Look at them in order of name, not display order).

Kelderic

[BuilderQ]

Changing to a .gif will not reduce the size, it will only change to file type and reduce the picture quality.

By size, I meant the number of bytes the file will take up on a disk, not the pixel dimensions of the image.