melon
12-22-2008, 04:05 AM
Save the images as GIFs.
Don't do this. Converting an image to a .gif will often significantly decrease the image quality, lessening the amount of different colors in the image and giving it an overpixelated look. Upon saving the image as a .jpeg, most decent image manipulation programs allow the end-user to choose the quality level. For example, Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) features a quality slider with values ranging from 0 to 100, where higher values lead to higher image quality but higher filesizes. Choosing a value from 85 to 90 will produce an image sufficiently small for use as an avatar while maintaining a quality indistinguishable from the highest setting. Just experiment with the program you use to produce a small, high-quality avatar.
If you don't have a capable image editor, try downloading a free one such as Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/), paint.net (http://www.paint.net/), or, as mentioned above, Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/). While these are quite different from each other in terms of intended use, they should all have options allowing you to edit such an image. Alternatively, you could just post the images you want modified in this subforum.
To see why you shouldn't convert images to the .gif format, compare these two images; the first being a .jpg, and the second being converted to a .gif. In particular, focus on the areas with gradiation in color, such as the sky, and heavily antialiased areas, such as the text and wires:
http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/5562/5cmperseclb1.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8987/5cmpersecwh5.gif
Of course, the effect won't be quite as noticeable on images lacking in color (I chose that particular image to demonstrate the effect), but .gif images are generally uglier. Or I'm just a quality nazi.
Don't do this. Converting an image to a .gif will often significantly decrease the image quality, lessening the amount of different colors in the image and giving it an overpixelated look. Upon saving the image as a .jpeg, most decent image manipulation programs allow the end-user to choose the quality level. For example, Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) features a quality slider with values ranging from 0 to 100, where higher values lead to higher image quality but higher filesizes. Choosing a value from 85 to 90 will produce an image sufficiently small for use as an avatar while maintaining a quality indistinguishable from the highest setting. Just experiment with the program you use to produce a small, high-quality avatar.
If you don't have a capable image editor, try downloading a free one such as Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/), paint.net (http://www.paint.net/), or, as mentioned above, Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/). While these are quite different from each other in terms of intended use, they should all have options allowing you to edit such an image. Alternatively, you could just post the images you want modified in this subforum.
To see why you shouldn't convert images to the .gif format, compare these two images; the first being a .jpg, and the second being converted to a .gif. In particular, focus on the areas with gradiation in color, such as the sky, and heavily antialiased areas, such as the text and wires:
http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/5562/5cmperseclb1.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8987/5cmpersecwh5.gif
Of course, the effect won't be quite as noticeable on images lacking in color (I chose that particular image to demonstrate the effect), but .gif images are generally uglier. Or I'm just a quality nazi.