How to get within the 6kb avatar limit?

[equalsign]

This is going to sound kind of silly, but how in the world are you guys getting your avatars within the 6kb range? Last night I made some little pixel art guy in Photoshop and was hoping to use him as my avi, but the file is way too big. It's only 80x80 pixels! Even when I crop about half of it out and put it on the lowest quality settings it is still over 30kbs as a jpeg. Any advice?

[Flak Beard]

I had the same issue, but used the "Save For Web" feature in Photoshop. You'll get better file sizes than just saving normally and choosing your output quality.

If you can't get it under 6K, let me know and I might be able to help.

[equalsign]

Thanks! You're a freaking genius! I didn't even know that feature existed^^.

[Flak Beard]

Thanks! You're a freaking genius! I didn't even know that feature existed^^.

No prob.

[Limewater]

The problem seems to have been solved, but I can't seem to shup up, so I'm throwing in my two cents.

It's small enough that you probably can't tell a difference, but for pixel-art images like that you're usually better off saving them as .png if you have the option. JPEG compression is really not well suited for images with large fields of solid color and sharp edges, while the .gif and .png formats are ideally suited for such images. JPEG is better suited for smoother images, such as photographs.

If you go back and save your original, uncompressed pixel art image as .png, you should notice a very small filesize while seeing a slight improvement in quality.

[equalsign]

The problem seems to have been solved, but I can't seem to shup up, so I'm throwing in my two cents.

It's small enough that you probably can't tell a difference, but for pixel-art images like that you're usually better off saving them as .png if you have the option. JPEG compression is really not well suited for images with large fields of solid color and sharp edges, while the .gif and .png formats are ideally suited for such images. JPEG is better suited for smoother images, such as photographs.

If you go back and save your original, uncompressed pixel art image as .png, you should notice a very small filesize while seeing a slight improvement in quality.

Thanks! You saved me all the time I was going to waste later today trying to see which format would give me the best results. The JPEG looked smeared and ugly and I really wasn't happy with it. The PNG looks pristine .

[marurun]

Some web sites don't support PNG for avatars, so also consider GIF. The limit with GIF is that your image is limited to a 256 color palette, which shouldn't be a problem for an 80 x 80 image, however.