> > Sorry if it seems as if I'm interfering, but, I think the problem here,
> as I
> > discovered earlier today with my avatar (such as it is!) is that at the
> > moment, for some reason, the server does not seem to like being given
> 100x100
> > images for use as avatars, give it something a little bigger, which it
> can
> > then itself reduce a little bit such as
> > which is 110x110 pixels, and then it's happy to set the picture as an
> avatar.
>
>
> He-he, that figures doesn't it? They request a 100x100 image and then can't
> work with it properly. Next thing you know we'll have to send them 5x7's
> through the mail.

Ok, seems to be a bug here - ironic isn't it?: The only place the code fails is where it doesn't have to do anything at all...

I'll try to fix it by then end of this week - you should be able to use the fixed code next week.

The best way to get a good avatar (when the system works as expected) is to go to your photo-editor and scale your image to 100x100 and save in max quality.
The webserver will then load your image and resave it so that it uses about 4KB. This should give the finest quality.

If you do not prescale the image the webserver will scale it to fit and cut off anything that doesn't match the 100x100 with the proportions of your image. Ie. a 110x100 image will get 5 pixel cut off on each side - just as a 220x220 would.

Thanks for making me aware of this bug

Since were talking about the avatar's, I have one question also, a little off topic though.

Why is it that transparency in PNG files doesn't work?

If you upload a PNG with transparency, the transparent area will be replaced by a color.

Test

shitty quality

oops

> Since were talking about the avatar's, I have one question also, a little off
> topic though.
>
> Why is it that transparency in PNG files doesn't work?
>
> If you upload a PNG with transparency, the transparent area will be replaced
> by a color.
>

Because the servercode doesn't support transparent files =)

you need a good quality image to start with then you get a clear avitar like mine






Application has reported a 'Not My Fault' in module KRNL.EXE in line 0200:103F

> Hello
> I like the pics in these posts next to people's names.How do I go about
> getting one etc?
>
> Thanks
>
> Rachel.

Here's a good source of space photos: Just click on the planet of your choice...

C

Hmmmm...the URL didn't show up...let me try again.
Here's a good source of space photos: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html Just click on the planet of your choice...

C

> Hmmmm...the URL didn't show up...let me try again.
> Here's a good source of space photos:
> http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html Just click on the planet of your
> choice...
>
> C
> src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/cpdn/stats.php?userID=298">
>

Do not need other people's pics.I took my moon pic myself ;-)


......In Space No One Can Hear You Scream......

>
> Do not need other people's pics.I took my moon pic myself ;-)
>

No offense intended; it's a great moon photo! I was just providing the URL so you or others could look through the photos if you wanted to.

C

>
> >
> > Do not need other people's pics.I took my moon pic myself ;-)
> >
>
> No offense intended; it's a great moon photo! I was just providing the URL so
> you or others could look through the photos if you wanted to.
>
> C
> src="http://boinc.mundayweb.com/cpdn/stats.php?userID=298">
>

Thanks for the link.No offence taken.


......In Space No One Can Hear You Scream......

I have just added my avatar. My first try flopped as the image wasn’t square so the top and bottom got cropped to make it square and then stretched to fit, which looked bad. My second go is the image you can see but it wouldn’t work as I believe it had the same name as my first try, I put a temporary image in then changed it to what I wanted. Though I could probably just have changed the file name, I also made it 101x101 (to give the system something to do as suggested).

Anthony

> I have just added my avatar. My first try flopped as the image wasn’t square
> so the top and bottom got cropped to make it square and then stretched to fit,
> which looked bad. My second go is the image you can see but it wouldn’t work
> as I believe it had the same name as my first try, I put a temporary image in
> then changed it to what I wanted. Though I could probably just have changed
> the file name, I also made it 101x101 (to give the system something to do as
> suggested).
>
> Anthony
>

I like it.Drink some Duff beer ;-)


......In Space No One Can Hear You Scream......

> I'll try to fix it by then end of this week - you should be able to use the
> fixed code next week.

Ok, code fixed. It usually takes a few days (and now we have a weekend as well) to get the code online, so you should be able to upload 100x100 avatars around Tuesday...

Well, my avatar was accepted at last! Problem: It's all blue. What's with that? Plus, it's out of focus. I tried both JPEG and PNG versions: all blue, here. How is it some of you have wonderfully-clear and multi-colored avatars, whilst mine ends up blurry and blue? Help! (Thank you for any constructive advice you can render.)

=^..^=

Change number of colors in your avatar...

Thanks for the advice, 'bosh, but I've no idea how to change the number of colors; neither would I know what such a number should be. I don't have PhotoShop, just a cheesy bargain-basement editing application which doesn't allow for number-of-colors changing.

Of course, I wonder why my avatar shows up just fine on various other message boards yet gets messed up by this one. Alas! For now, I'm just going to leave it all alone and blue. Maybe the avatar-upload function here will be fixed eventually, so I'll try again from time to time; and, perhaps, one of these days Tifa Lockheart won't look like she's not wearing a top.

=^..^=

Joseph, if you like save my avitar and update yours :)

Joseph,

What did your image originally look like? It's not bad looking in blue, since it appears to be a night scene.

> ... Problem: It's all blue. What's with
> that? Plus, it's out of focus. I tried both JPEG and PNG versions: all
> blue, here. ...

Was it edited on a MAC or a PC? They use different gamma settings, in effect brightness. Are you using a calibrated monitor with an ICC profile?

From the image content (anime), I will assume the image started out as a GIF (8-bit color). If it was a GIF, it had a limited palette to begin with, only 256 colors maximum (Indexed Color mode), and possibly only 216 maximum (Web). Not all GIFs use the full palette. The image can be dithered by the graphics application you edited it with, or the browser, or both.

If the image was a JPG, have you edited it several times and saved it back to itself, or to a new filename, but, in any case, saved it as a jpg?

You will loose data from a JPG image by editing it and saving it. Later, when you reopen it, edit it some more, and save it again, you lose still more data. JPEG is a "lossy" format. Every time you open, edit and save an image as a JPG, you loose 15% of the data (a common default value), or you could look at it as keeping only 85% of the data each time. Every time you open, edit and save an image as a JPG, the image quality deteriorates still more.

When you resize an image to a smaller size, image data is thrown away. More lost image data. If you originally got it off the web, it may have already gone through several itterations of this process.

Remember, once the data is gone, you cannot put it back. If it was enlarged from a smaller image (before you reduced the image to avatar-size), the data used to "fill-in" the gaps between the existing data was interpolated (made up) by making an "educated" guess as to what "belonged" in that pixel.

A suggestion, if you need to edit a JPG several times, save the original image as a photoshop (PSD) or Tiff (TIF) file, and work from that file. Nither of these formats will lose data when it is saved and resaved. You can always convert it to JPG as the final step before you put it on the web.

As for the loss of "focus," blurring can occur in any number of ways, including loss of data, or overuse of the Unsharp Mask filter (USM). As the last step before converting the image to JPG, run the USM filter in your graphics program to sharpen the image. ONLY RUN THIS FILTER ONCE on an image, multiple applications of USM or the over use of USM can be a major cause of loss of detail in an image. The USM filter is not adjustable after you apply it. If you over apply it, just undo the filter effect with the undo function. USM really does increase apparent sharpness, it's an edge contrast function.

Cheers,

Stephen
<P>"I want to go dancing on the moon, I want to frolic in zero gravity!....", and now, I just might be able to go! Thanks, SpaceShipOne and crew!<BR><a>

Thanks a lot, 'bosh, for that (shall we say) avatar exchange! Well, the best I could do after fiddling with "our" avatar was to at least get Tifa to appear a different color from the starry night. That's a big step forward, but of course it still lacks all the variations in color from what I'd been trying to upload originally. Alas!

Stephen Balch, I greatly appreciate your primer on degradation of quality in image files! No doubt I'm guilty of the majority of mistakes you mentioned; and I shall study your post at greater length, to see if I cannot somehow get this problem solved. As to what the image looks like at my end of the inter-net (in my local machine) I can at least say the night-time background appears as it does here. The foreground subject, however, is another matter: the hair is a different shade, as is the skin, as are the gloves (she doesn't actually have her hands tied behind her back) and the shirt -- what there is of it.

I can't for the life of me figure out why something as pedestrian as uploading an avatar is so problematic here! It uploads to the ClimatePrediction.Net message board just fine, as it does to every other message board of which I'm a member. (The LHC@Home board hasn't yet discovered avatars.) I'm willing to make every reasonable effort in attempting to create the Mysterious Perfect Avatar which this board apparently requires, but I do hope this board's administrators are making a similar effort so that this process can become as easy as it is everywhere else.

=^..^=

P.S.: If you go here you can see what this avatar is supposed to look like. This is the source nearest the original, from the world-wide web. I saved it to disk as a Bitmap, then saved it as a TIFF file; then I cropped it to a square, gave it a horizontal flip, did the "enhance" thing, upped the brightness 25 percent, lowered the contrast 25 percent, increased the saturation 25 percent and gave it a "normal" sharpen. Then I reduced its dimensions from 393 pixels a side to 390 pixels, so the sharpen wouldn't be quite as sharp-looking. I saved it as a second TIFF file, which you can see by clicking on the hyper-link above.

Subsequent P.S.: By the way, It's still "no joy" in getting it (when reduced to 100 pixels on a side and saved as a JPEG or PNG) to show up here as anything but all blue. *runs away crying*