Creating a Custom Avatar
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 12:10 am
For those who want to make a custom Avatar for the Texas BBQ Forum, but don’t know how, here are some basic instructions. I used free programs or websites, so there’s nothing to buy. If you have access to Photoshop or other graphic editing programs, you can use those, too.
1. Decide on a picture or graphic for your Avatar. Remember, these are small pics, so you don’t really want to use anything too detailed. For this example, we’ll use this pic, just cause the glasses are a nice touch:
2. Go to http://webresizer.com/resizer/ and upload your pic there. This website is a free photo editing site.
3. Click the Browse button to locate your image. This opens up a window to open images.
4. Highlight your file, and then click Open.
5. The window will close and go back to the browser window. The location of your file will be in the box. Just click Upload Image and wait. It’ll load the image from your computer and get it ready for editing. Depending on the size of your pic, this could take a while.
6. From here, you can just resize it, or crop it to only include what you want. In this case, I don’t want the TV pic in the background. Click the Crop Image option. It’ll put a selection box on the screen. Drag the borders of the box to select the part of the image you want, and then click Apply Changes. It’ll crop the image and show you the results.
7. Now play around a bit with the settings. You can sharpen the image with the Sharpen control or change the tint, contrast, brightness, or saturation using the various controls. Just remember the settings you had so you can go back to them if you don’t like the results. The back button on the web browser doesn’t necessarily work, so keep that in mind. Here, I just want to sharpen the image. My current setting is 40, so I’ll enter 250, and then click Apply Changes.
8. Remember, the size limit on Avatars for the TXBBQF is 150x150 pixels or 146 KB. This pic is too big, so we need to resize it. Enter the new size (150) into the New Size area, and then click Apply Changes.
9. We’re in luck! The new size is under the 146 KB limit, so we’re in! If it weren’t, there’d be a couple more steps to do. For now, we’re done here, so we’re going to save it to the computer. Click the “download this imageâ€
1. Decide on a picture or graphic for your Avatar. Remember, these are small pics, so you don’t really want to use anything too detailed. For this example, we’ll use this pic, just cause the glasses are a nice touch:
2. Go to http://webresizer.com/resizer/ and upload your pic there. This website is a free photo editing site.
3. Click the Browse button to locate your image. This opens up a window to open images.
4. Highlight your file, and then click Open.
5. The window will close and go back to the browser window. The location of your file will be in the box. Just click Upload Image and wait. It’ll load the image from your computer and get it ready for editing. Depending on the size of your pic, this could take a while.
6. From here, you can just resize it, or crop it to only include what you want. In this case, I don’t want the TV pic in the background. Click the Crop Image option. It’ll put a selection box on the screen. Drag the borders of the box to select the part of the image you want, and then click Apply Changes. It’ll crop the image and show you the results.
7. Now play around a bit with the settings. You can sharpen the image with the Sharpen control or change the tint, contrast, brightness, or saturation using the various controls. Just remember the settings you had so you can go back to them if you don’t like the results. The back button on the web browser doesn’t necessarily work, so keep that in mind. Here, I just want to sharpen the image. My current setting is 40, so I’ll enter 250, and then click Apply Changes.
8. Remember, the size limit on Avatars for the TXBBQF is 150x150 pixels or 146 KB. This pic is too big, so we need to resize it. Enter the new size (150) into the New Size area, and then click Apply Changes.
9. We’re in luck! The new size is under the 146 KB limit, so we’re in! If it weren’t, there’d be a couple more steps to do. For now, we’re done here, so we’re going to save it to the computer. Click the “download this imageâ€