It's usually a good idea to take the original image, scale it to 100x100 using a proper resampling method (bicubic or the like - the one on the server is not very good), decrease the number of colours in the image to 255 using a proper algorithm and then upload as a full quality png.

This should do the trick.

I'm bumping this thread because I made a big edit in my previous post. I continue to shamelessly seek help in solving this avatar problem!

=^..^=

Joseph,

Okay, I think I've fixed it for you. I've looked at this new image in IE6, NS7.2, and Firefox 1.0PR, and it looks okay to me. I brought up the color and sharpened it slightly. It may be a bit dark for your tastes, but I can fix that, if you want me to do so. BTW, it's 101 x 101 pixels.

First, I'm having trouble getting the image into this message. Then, I was going to temporarily change my avatar and you could have saved a copy of your avatar from it, but I can't seem to change my avatar, either. (Actually, I did. It just took a while to show up.)

If you give me an email address, I can email it to you. Or, if you have another suggestion as to how I might get it to you, I'm game.

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>

Joseph

Is this a ok?

'Bosh, that looks just fine! Thank you very much! However: When I copy it and then upload it to my preferences here, it ends up looking like this (see avatar). Alas!

Stephen, I thank you for your help as well! By all means, please send it to me via Mister-Cat1@ComCast.net at your convenience. You're right, too: I'm not into "dark," but at this point I'll take what I can get!

Janus, thank you for your suggestions as well! I'm learning a lot here in this thread.

It's obvious to me the problem is with the web-site software; and it would be heartening to know the administrators are fixing it even as we speak. I get the feeling, however, that's not necessarily the case. :D

=^..^=

This one works for me.

Joseph,

For some reason, when I put it up as a JPEG it turns to "stuff", much like the one you originally used. The one that is up now is a PNG, and it looks ok, even through this message board and whatever they do to them after we upload the images. I've also lightened it slightly, but you can't go too far. If you do, you will lose even more detail in the face. It's grainy enough now.

This one has a "Web Browser Optimized," 256-color palette. It is a non-interlaced PNG using ZIP-compression, 101 px by 101 px at 96 ppi, with a file size of 6,387 bytes. It has no preview image, and no transparent color. And, it seems to work.

I'll send you the image I worked up from your TIFF file. Can you handle a Photoshop PSD file, with or without layers, or would you prefer an uncompressed TIFF? I'll also send the current avatar image and one other like it.

I'm studying photography, and we use Photoshop. I generally work on images in Photoshop PSD, TIFF, EPS, NEF(RAW), and (when I'm using some digital cameras) JPEG (which I immediately convert to PSD before I work on them) formats. I haven't worked very much in PNG, and I hate GIF, although for some things GIFs are okay.

Janus,

Thanks for the information, it helped a lot.

Ziggy Ronis,

Wow, what happened to that one?

Cheers,

Stephen

"I want to go dancing on the moon, I want to frolic in zero gravity!....", and now, I might be able to go someday! Thanks, SpaceShipOne and crew!<BR><a> [/url]

> This one has a "Web Browser Optimized," 256-color palette. It is a
> non-interlaced PNG using ZIP-compression, 101 px by 101 px at 96 ppi, with a
> file size of 6,387 bytes. It has no preview image, and no transparent color.
> And, it seems to work.

Actually you shouldn't need to do the 101x101 thing anymore, the system should accept 100x100 now... please let me know if that is not the case...

> Actually you shouldn't need to do the 101x101 thing anymore, the system should
> accept 100x100 now... please let me know if that is not the case...

Well it accepts 100x100 now... but mine is still being completely mangled on the colors. The requirements state that the file must be 100x100 and no larger than 4KB. My file is 100x100 and 2.78 KB so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Color depth is 24 bits. Is there an unwritten requirement that the color depth be 16 or something?

What my avatar SHOULD look like:


---------------------------------------
- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
Possibly the best stats site in the universe:
http://boinc-kwsn.no-ip.info

Stephen, thanks for doing all this work on my behalf! I don't know which to choose, the Adobe (PSD) file or the TIFF file. In theory my software can handle them both, so I'll leave that decision up to you. I'll try anything and everything! *waits with bated breath*

Toby, I'm sorry to see you're going through this very same avatar agony! What is with this web site, anyway?

=^..^=

Janus,

The "Web Browser Optimized," 256-color palette is a standard 6X6X6 (216-color) palette.

>
> Actually you shouldn't need to do the 101x101 thing anymore, the system should
> accept 100x100 now... please let me know if that is not the case...
>

Okay, I'll make the next one 100 px X 100 px. I still have questions about how the program handles the palette for an uploaded JPEG. You indicated, for best results, the user should downsample to a 100 px X 100 px, 255-color (?) palette PNG. The server then converts the PNG to a JPEG?

If an uploaded PNG is converted to a JPEG by the server, the server seems to handle the palette okay. If a JPEG is uploaded, the server doesn't seem to handle the conversion from 24-bit to an 8-bit (256-color, or 216-color) palette all that well, at least for the three samples with which I've played: my uploaded JPEG (blueish, like Josephs), Josephs online JPEG (blueish), and Tobys online JPEG (also blueish). These three images, from different sources, and probably different graphics apps, all seem to have skewed palettes.

I realize this is a cosmetic problem, and probably not high on the priority list. But, if you get some "spare" time.... (GRIN)

Cheers,

Stephen

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

test



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

another test


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

another test


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

> Okay, I'll make the next one 100 px X 100 px. I still have questions about
> how the program handles the palette for an uploaded JPEG. You indicated, for
> best results, the user should downsample to a 100 px X 100 px, 255-color (?)
> palette PNG. The server then converts the PNG to a JPEG?

Ok, you can see I program too much - my natural numbers start at 0 =)
So ya, that's actually 256 colours for you, hehe, sorry about that.

> If an uploaded PNG is converted to a JPEG by the server, the server seems to
> handle the palette okay. If a JPEG is uploaded, the server doesn't seem to
> handle the conversion from 24-bit to an 8-bit (256-color, or 216-color)
> palette all that well, at least for the three samples with which I've played:

That's correct. This is the first time I do a raid on the forum software, which means there is still a lot of room for improvements. To start out with I wrote something that I knew would run on every server you threw at it. The built-in jpg and png functions in PHP are all limited to 256 paletted colours and poor pixel-by-pixel scaling.
In the next revision of the forums the code will detect if a better version of the GD library is installed on the server and if it is it will use the full 24bit range of colours as well as make proper bicubic resampling of the images when scaling (like photoshop does for instance).

But you will have to wait a bit for more features from me, I'm pretty busy elsewhere at the moment...

testing.

testing.


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

Based on all the sugestions in this thread I think I have the put together the steps currently needed to upload a good quality avatar.

I started with the tiff from Joseph's post.

Using The GIMP photo editor I scaled the image to 100 X 100. Then I changed the Image Mode to Indexed and a max of 256 colors. I then saved it as a PNG file using max compression.

Then uploaded this image. This is the best I could get it.

PS

If your photo editor does not have an easy way to change the number of colors in a PNG image you can use these steps to achive the same results (at least they worked for me.)
Scale the image to 100 X 100 then save it to a GIF file. Then re-open it and save it as a PNG. Then upload.

> Based on all the sugestions in this thread I think I have the put together the
> steps currently needed to upload a good quality avatar.

Thanks. Finally it works. Although I had to drop it down to 64 colors before I could get under the 4KB limit. That seems to have introduced a bit of jagginess but better than having everything all blue :)


---------------------------------------
- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
Possibly the best stats site in the universe:
http://boinc-kwsn.no-ip.info

Lab Rat, you're my new hero! Yay! That final sentence in your post has resulted in The Big Breakthrough of 2004! Thank you, very much.

Thanks to everyone else, too, who expended effort and took time to help me! I really appreciate everybody's great spirit of co-operation. I am in your debt, yet happily so!

=^..^=