Avatar help!

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Hello,

Well I have been noticing with hl2.net forums, my avatar size gets the quality raped right out of it. D:

I've tried Adobe Photoshope & the avatar gets ruined ;( so I am running out of avatar options & I would like to know if there is another program that I can use to size it down with out harming the quality of the picture much.

It just baffles me on how people here get their avatar so perfect,I am so envyous. D: I hope hl2.net upgrades their avatar limit size like 50x60.

From this.....to ths--->:

 

[Beerdude26]

Use anti-aliasing?
Here's a tutorial I found: http://www.phong.com/tutorials/anti-alias/

 

[Qonfused]

Considering you compressed those to insane file sizes (1kb), of course they're going to look like crap.

 

[99.vikram]

Anti-aliasing.

Not that i've ever used it on a avatar.

 

[The Brick]

Don't use Jpeg :|

Use PNG.

 

[Ashitaka]

1.41 KB is what you compressed it down into.

Thats probably why you lost so much quality. See, The Brick's (post above) avatar is very high quality, and its 5 KB.

And yeah, I wish they'd allow bigger sizes too.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

IN photoshope today, I did the usual..use the rectangular marquee tool, resize the image but when I resize it...it gets a little scewy; such as I can never get it to 50x50. When I select the width by 50, the height goes to 68; but when I change the height to 50, the width goes to 37 wtf???

Let me show you step by step image's:

First stage

Second stage

Third stage, resizing

after uploading avatar to hl2.net

Final stage

D:

 

[kirovman]

IN photoshope today, I did the usual..use the rectangular marquee tool, resize the image but when I resize it...
it gets a little scewy; such as I can never get it to 50x50. When I select the width by 50, the height goes to 68;
but when I change the height to 50, the width goes to 37 wtf???

I don't use photoshop at home, but is there not an checkbox option to "maintain aspect ratio"?

If so, uncheck that.

 

[Keane]

IN photoshope today, I did the usual..use the rectangular marquee tool, resize the image but when I resize it...it gets a little scewy; such as I can never get it to 50x50. When I select the width by 50, the height goes to 68; but when I change the height to 50, the width goes to 37 wtf???

Well of course that's going to happen. Otherwise the picture would look stretched.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Thanks very much. :E

 

[Vegeta897]

Uhh... It's looking crappy because you're uploading an image that is too large for the forum so the forum resizes it and that = shit?

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Well how does this avatar look, what programs do you guys use?

 

[Vegeta897]

I just told you why your avatar was turning to shit... Your current avatar is stretched horizontally, and looks terrible. Why did you do that?

Dont stretch anything, just size the selection you want so that neither the X or Y length exceeds 50 pixels...

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

I just told you why your avatar was turning to shit... Your current avatar is stretched horizontally, and looks terrible. Why did you do that?

Dont stretch anything, just size the selection you want so that neither the X or Y length exceeds 50 pixels...

The size of my avatar is about the size of everybody else on this forum. Check it out here:

 

[Ennui]

What you're not understanding is that when you change the ratio of height to width while resizing, it stretches the image in one way or another. You need to resize, then crop, not just resize.

For the love of god, someone do it for him? I would, but I'm at work and there's no image editor to speak of.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Let me show the steps, to show you what I amdoing (Maybe some one can point out what I am doing wrong);
(P.S: I am using fakefactory mod but don't comment on that, ok)

First step, MS Paint:

I select the the rectangular marquee tool.

Second step, cut in MS paint:

I then cut & exit out of MS paint.

Third step, go to photophope:

In Photoshope, I go to file/new & paste.

Fourth step, resize the image:


Part A:

Part B:

Part C:

I change the height & width to 50, a 50x50 resolution.

So wondering what I am doing wrong...what is it?

 

[Ennui]

ASPECT RATIO

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Ok I see, this is it right;

It slims the image, aye?

 

[Ennui]

no, that's not it. you have to retain the original aspect ratio of the cropped picture from Paint, and then crop again in photoshop so that there's no distortion.

 

[Vegeta897]

I was about to post ASPECT RATIO in giant letters too.

Listen buddy, you need to resize the pic so that the largest dimension is 50. The other one can be smaller. You can't ****ing turn a rectangle into a square without stretching it. I suggest when you grab your selection from MS Paint grab a perfect square.

 

[Keane]

Put a check in the "constrain proportions" option

 

[Loke]

I made two different pictures of the faces, one normal while the other one is a bit sharper.
Hope they are good enough, but don't be afraid to tell me if you think they suck though.

 

[Operational]

Ok I'm going to demonstrate the process I use.

Step 1)
I opened your HUGE image in photoshop (in future please link to the image rather than post it in the thread)

Step 2)
Use the Crop Tool


To select the part of the image you want to use. You get a perfect square selection by holding down SHIFT (and you want to use squares)






Step 3)
Use the image size tool like you did before to make the image 50x50 - since you chose a square selection in step 2 the image wont be streached


Yay - small image!


Step 4)
Click "Save for Web"


Choose your quality setting to be as high as possible


halflife2.net has a maximum avatar file size of 29.3 KB. Its doubtful, for a non-animated image like this one, to ever get close to it. But for futures sake this tells you the size of the image you are going to save.


Step 5)
Admire or curse the results

EDIT
If I wanted this as my avatar I'd probably do it again but in Step 2 select less of the background.

 

[bigburpco]

Operational wins this thread.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Thank you, thank you guys very much.

 

[Keane]

Thank you, thank you guys very much.

Your avatar is still stretched :|

 

[Vegeta897]

I can't stop laughing.

 

[Acepilotf14]

My icon is an AIM icon..

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Your avatar is still stretched :|

I did as posted above!!!! Poposterious!!!!

 

[bigburpco]

You didn't press Shift, did you?