[diggingforgold]

I thought it would be a good idea to see how far I can compress my avatar- way below the max size. Please list your favorite freeware applications that have good file compressing abilities. I say freeware because I don't have the money to go out and spend $300 on the latest photoshop (that... and I'm too lazy ). Any suggestions?

[flixotide]

Sorry if I sound just a wee bit on edgt side. But are avatars really that important?

To me it is what I read here, the knowledge I can share.

If I wanted to look at pictures of weird stuff representing someone or something, I'd go to a gallery or turn on my TV to art-chan.

If it were up to me, I'd kill piccy sigs and keep avatars as they are.

Cheers, Flixotide

[diggingforgold]

Well since it has an option for one, and since mine could be reduced, I think I should at least try. Obviously the seniors here are trying to see how well things can go with the avatar option enabled, and while they are giving us that priviledge, it wouldnt hurt to compress them as much as possible.

Anyhoo- I'm planning on going for that membership deal thingy, so whatever revenue the forums get from my membership can go toward covering the bandwidth generated from my 10K file. I hope that membership thing gets setup soon.

But your right. We do have an option of not having one. But avatars sometimes help people identify a person by what picture they have. An example is Oni's (t-shirt ninja) avatar. You know instantly who he is and what he represents (senior t-shirt ninja).

Once avatars become too burdensome on the forums, I will remove mine. But until then, they add a bit of goofiness/ not-so-serious environment in the forums that makes it feel like home here.

[flixotide]

Sure, thats true, avatars DO bring a little "feel" over the forums, and don't make them all too serious.

That particular aspect of the avatar wasn't in my mind at the time.

But if avatars and piccy sigs wind up bottlenecking the system, I'd say give a big chuck, and I'll whip up a few jokes instead, to make things fun and comfortable.

Cheers, Flixotide

[nikhsub1]

I've optimized your avatar for you, was 7.08k now it is 2.52k...

[flixotide]

Okay.... I admit it... even that is worth reconsidering.. 60% is quite a bit of bandwidth worth taking into acount..

Cheers, Flixotide

[o770]

Originally posted by diggingforgold

I posted about it once in the Avatar Thread but the post was removed after sometime. this is an online and free img editor. it will not only compress the imgs but do several other manipulations to it:
GIFWorks!

[TweakOC]

Iam wondering with out making the image jpg did you get it smaller that crazy amount... I'll be back to see if someone can get mine to look that good and smaller.

edit:
<------ ok thats my picture.

[ToledoSteel]

I was just wondering if I should reduce the size of my avatar. While I just made it and added it today, I couldn't help but notice that it was right on the size limit and everyone else seems to be well below. It isn't a problem for me to reduce it's size, I just reduce the qualtiy in photoshop. I was just trying to be sympathetic twords the bandwidth issues that seem to be prevalent.

[DAGO]

Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 7 is available in a trial version that if free for 30 days...around 31MB and can be found here:

http://www.jasc.com/trialreg.asp?pid=001

Another trial version is available from Adobe, which they call Adobe Photoshop Elements...It is alot bigger at over 100MB and can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshople/main.html

My favorite is the Jasc PSP7 Trial version, as it comes with an additional Animation Shop program that is very useful for making up animated avatars as well...

Have fun...