Avatars again

[ina]

I've been trying to get a photo up (competition for the old fox...), but can't get anything small enough to be accepted. How on earth do you do it? If I reduce the size to the required 8KB, the quality gets too bad - too grainy.

Is there a trick, or do I just not have a suitable photo? (I don't have a camera myself, so I've been trying out some my friend took.)

[Shirley]

Hi Ina

I use www.photobucket.com as a hosting website for my pics... I was trying last night and they all appeared massive... I gave up - I thought, but then this morning when I signed in again I found that it had worked

[Muddypause]

This is the result of many hours of scientific research into the matter:

As you mention 8KB, I'm assuming you are talking about an avatar that will appear with your name and Good Life pic. beside your message. There are two ways of doing this:

1) You can upload an image directly from you computer to the forum site by using the 'Upload Avatar from your machine' box in your profile page. You are limited to an 8KB size.

2) You can upload the image to another site (like www.photobucket.com or your own web space), and then put a refering URL into the 'Link to off-site Avatar' box. The image that appears will, by the magic that is the internet, actually be hosted on the other site, so if that site goes down your image will disappear. But you can use images larger than 8KB (though obviously you don't want one that is too large in area).

Some people seem to have trouble getting option 1) to work. I only managed it by uploading the image to another site, and then copying it across to the forum. To do this, use the 'Upload Avatar from a URL' box.

To get the image small enough may require use of an image editor. Saving the image as a .jpg or .jpeg is probably best for this purpose, and most image editors will give you compression options as you save. You may have to do some cropping or resizing too. An excellent free image viewer that has some editing features is IrfanView

[ina]

Thanks, that makes sense. I did try it the direct way, and 8KB just wasn't enough to make it look anything like what it was supposed to be. I'll try it via photobucket - I think I used that for the photos I posted in the livestock forum before.

Cheers

[ina]

Problem still not solved: I did manage to upload it, but can't get the photo small enough! Takes up about a quarter of the screen... Tried to resize it in photobucket to 25% of original, but every time I do that - nothing happens. Tried to resize it to 12.5% in adobe photoshop (where I did the previous editing, i.e. cropping) - but again, it just won't accept it.

HELP! Why does this have to be so complicated? And those b***y help buttons are just no help at all!

[Andy Hamilton]

Right one off as it can be such a fiddly job, upload a picture to Photobucket and pm me with the url and I will have a play about and sort you one out.

[Millymollymandy]

Ok, I decided to upload an avatar from my machine. I have made it less than 200 pixels, (175 in fact to make it 8kb or less).

Now it tells me that pictures have to be jpg or whatever.

IT IS A JPG!!!!!

So much time wasted on these avatars, that's why I didn't bother on this site but I am getting confused amongst all the Basil Brushes now!

[Muddypause]

Now it tells me that pictures have to be jpg or whatever.

IT IS A JPG!!!!!

That's the problem that seems to happen. Upload it to www.photobucket.com, or your own webspace, or some other place, and then use the 'Upload Avatar from a URL' box. That seems to work OK.

[Millymollymandy]

Aarrrggghhh - put the photo on my website and this is what I get now when I try to upload it:


Unable to upload file

DEBUG MODE

Line : 249
File : usercp_avatar.php

[Millymollymandy]

Bingo!! My site changed the jpg to a gif automatically until I copied it over as a jpg, so obviously this site (unlike others) doesn't accept gifs.

[Wombat]

Love the chook M3!

[ina]

I had the debug mode message at one stage, too - I'll give it another try,and if it doesn't work, I'll take up Andy's kind offer to sort me out...

[Muddypause]

Hey, Ina, you've done it. Look very closely under Basil Brush - there is a tiny tiny little image. Apparently it is all of 7 x 9 pixels, and yet occupies 6.23KB. Most odd. How can something so small be so big?

[ina]

I thought there was something funny underneath Basil... But how the heck???? Last time it was huge! And I've done nothing different.

Anyway, I would like it to be a bit bigger ! Can't expect everybody to use their microscope. I've sent the URL to Andy, too.

[Millymollymandy]

Love the chook M3!

It's little Ginger! I do seem to be taking up an inordinate amount of space though with a tall picture plus B. Brush!

I wonder if we could just have our own avatars instead of dear Basil, once we had got through the Good Life ranks? What does everyone else think? Andy?