Help on making Avatars
 

I could ask this in the request thread, but I'd rather not bother those talented people with my noobish questions.

I'm not very skilled with Photoshop, but I had a decent enough knowledge to make some avatars for GFF. But with the new 20kb rule, I've had some hurdles in creating avatars that look good enough. As you can see with my current AV, the results are a pixelated mess.

Normally what I do is first crop the part of the image that I want, then after some image adjustments, I resize it to 105 x 150. After, I save the picture as a jpeg, then adjust the quality when the bar appears. But with the new rule, I've had to lower the quality all the way to 1.

So how do you lower the pixel count to 20kb, but still have a clean looking image? Please give me any tips you have.

in photoshop I use the "save for the Web" fonction.

after that a new window will open with your image and to the right you have some setting you can change. Look closely to the right of the "preset: name" there's a little arrow, click on it and select "optimize to file size..." and there you can insert maximum kb that you want the image to be and it will set all the setting so that the image doesn't exceed the amout of kb, most of the time it do a perfect job ^^

and this is what I did with your avatar (I took it from the same wallpaper)

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/3756/dragava7cs.jpg

the ava is 10kb and there no quality lost there ^^

Awesome. Thanks for the info, and double thanks for the avatar. :D

Dunno about you guys but for me I find that whenever I save my avatar as a .jpg I always go over the limit unless I sacrifice quality (usually quality level around 4, unacceptable) but I have since found that if i save the avatar as a .GIF it tends to be small enough for GFF's requirements. Simple Save As.. .GIF, I don't need to shrink it or do anything special.

I tried saving it as a gif, but the filesize was over the limit. I have no idea how to adjust the pixel ratio in a gif.

Also, you can adjust the ratio of the crop tool so it locks itself at 105x150.

Alternatively, you can make a spiffy B&W picture and just tell everyone that you're an artist. ^_^

I usually start with a 105x150 box. I copy/past a massive image (usually super High-Res) onto a Photoshop layer. From there I play with it. I reasize the image not to fit the box but until I've captured all that I think needs to be captured and have made an interesting composition based off of a larger image. I want to catch the right parts of the image and have them be just the right size. I'm actually very meticulous about it. I don't want my avatars to be forgettable. (Hopefully, they are not.)

Nine times out of ten I mess with the brightness/contrast, or color balance if the colors are too dull. For example, my current avatar is significantly redder than its source.

hmm there something far more easy then what you do Legato.

1. open your image (original size of the picture)
2. click on the rectangular marquee tool
3. change style to: Fixed Aspect Ration
4. put 105x150 in the aspect ration
5. select the part of the picture that you want in the avatar (it will do a rectangle of the ration 105x150)
6. copy/paste the selection into a new file
7. resize the file to 105x150 and there you have your new avatar

to save the ava for something less then 20kb with almost no quality lost, just follow what I said in this thread earlier^^

Why would you use the marquee when you can do the same thing with the crop tool.

The marquee method is useful when you don't want the crop function to auto resize the image while having a fixed size ratio.

That isn't the same for me. Seeing the entire image will confuse my opinion of the final product. If I work within the confined space of a 105x105 pixel box, I am always aware of what the avatar would look like exactly.

I typically use a method similar to Inhet's (though I use 103x148 so I have room for a 1px stroke around the image). However, I'll have to try Legato's method, since it seems easier. The problem with the marquee is that while you can move it around, you can't adjust the size of it without starting over again.

I just use paint >.< Is that a bad thing? If not, go to Lt. Luger :p He makes avatars when mine don't turn out good.

Cause the marquee tool is more pro, and the crop tool is noobrish.

The only disadvantage with the crop tool is that you can't easily switch between bilinear and bicubic resizing. Sorry.