Trouble changing avatar...

maxnick · Post by **maxnick** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 8:17 pm

So I was trying to change my avatar, but the file was to big for the server, so I went to TinyPic, uploaded it there and then used the upload by URL thing but then I got this:

So I went to Image Shack and did the same thing, but I just got the same error message

Any :idea:s?

Marinus · Post by **Marinus** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 8:24 pm

Avatar control panel wrote:Displays a small graphic image below your details in posts. Only one image can be displayed at a time, its width can be no greater than 120 pixels, the height no greater than 120 pixels, and the file size no more than 49 KB.

How big is your avatar? (heigth, width and filesize?)

jozsefkoma · Post by **jozsefkoma** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 8:25 pm

Wich image you used?

maxnick · Post by **maxnick** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 9:10 pm

I used this

It seems to be within the hight and width requirements, I'll go check the file size though...

EDIT: Ok, it's 102 KB or something so that is probably why...

Marinus · Post by **Marinus** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 9:13 pm

123 KB on disk (120.685 bytes)

Edit: I think it's a nice avatar though, and since you don't post very much it probably wouldn't bother me, but if people who post much have flashing / moving pictures in avatar or signature, so there are moving pictures everywhere on the forum, it would distract me from reading the forum.

Edit 2: Compared to my avatar, which is just a picture, is about the same area, but only 8 KB

MyNameIsKooky · Post by **MyNameIsKooky** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 9:30 pm

Any animated thing would probably be too big.

Marinus · Post by **Marinus** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 9:50 pm

No, not any animated thing. Since my avatar, which is 120 x 120 pixels, is 8 KB, there can be 6 of those pictures in an animated one, and it will be 48 KB. However, I think the white and black "snow" parts, between the 2 pictures in Max's new avatar together with the 2 pictures theirselves, are more then 6. If there would be 6 pictures, and the pictures 1 and 4 are the MaxNick and NixMack pictures, and the 2,3,5 and 6 the "snow pictures, I think it could be within 49 KB.

Qloof234 · Post by **Qloof234** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:13 pm

"GIF Image, Animated - 54 Frames"

Yeah, too many for it to work properly.

maxnick · Post by **maxnick** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:29 pm

Marinus wrote:No, not any animated thing. Since my avatar, which is 120 x 120 pixels, is 8 KB, there can be 6 of those pictures in an animated one, and it will be 48 KB. However, I think the white and black "snow" parts, between the 2 pictures in Max's new avatar together with the 2 pictures theirselves, are more then 6. If there would be 6 pictures, and the pictures 1 and 4 are the MaxNick and NixMack pictures, and the 2,3,5 and 6 the "snow pictures, I think it could be within 49 KB.

Ok, I messed around with this and I think number of colors matters too I think, for example here's basically what you described in your above post, 6 frames of your avatar animating I added some stuff so you can see that its animating but I chose colors that already existed on the image.

39.6 KB - so this would work as an avatar (It would be sort of ridiculous but it would be possible)

Then I made it have all kinds of colors and stuff

53.5 KB - So this is not possible for an avatar, even though it has the same number of frames it has more colors.

Wait - I just checked an it turns out they both have 255 colors, weird.

Marinus · Post by **Marinus** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:46 pm

But it appeared Qloof is right, saying that your picture has 54 frames. And it's 123 KB. That would mean that with about 20 frames the file size would be less then 50 KB. Maybe those frames are much more compressed. Or maybe it makes difference that lots of those frames are about the same, so it doesn't take extra file size.

So maybe you should check the file size of each frame, and instead of using many frames which are the same, use only one frame but set the time longer. If I remember right it's also possible with Windows Movie Maker, to change the time of each frame of a GIF file separately.

maxnick · Post by **maxnick** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:49 pm

Marinus wrote:But it appeared Qloof is right, saying that your picture has 54 frames. And it's 123 KB.

Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with this I was just looking for an excuse to make strange avatars seeing how the colors effected it and was sharing my findings.

Marinus · Post by **Marinus** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 10:56 pm

I only said that because first I thought there could be only 6 frames in a 49 KB avatar, but probably that was wrong. Perhaps there can be about 20 frames. And if you see how many frames you used which are the same, it should be easy to reduce the 54, to 20.

boywhoflies · Post by **boywhoflies** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:03 pm

MyNameIsKooky wrote:Any animated thing would probably be too big.

Not realy.Look at my avatar.

BTW, if I change my avatar, this is/was it.

Marinus · Post by **Marinus** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:10 pm

Flying Boy, we already had come to the same conclusion.

Max Nick, I think your second Dr. House painting has a bigger filesize, because there are way more pixels with a different color. I'm not sure, but I think if you make 100 frames, and in all 100 frames there is only one pixel different each time, I think the total filesize will be just a little bit more the only one frame.

In the first picture you only drawed a few lines, but in the second one you changed the color of the entire picture. I think that will make difference.

maxnick · Post by **maxnick** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 12:26 am

Ok, by messing with the way the layers blended so when they blend they don't make new colors, adjusting some colors to make them more "web friendly", adjusting the "dither setting" to make-up for the lost colors and make it smaller to and just other general stuff...

It worked!

boywhoflies · Post by **boywhoflies** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 12:30 am

Yahoo!Bouia!Cowabunga!I dunno!

^_^ · Post by **^_^** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:43 am

WonderDr. House.