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avart

by Bastard Child

Image Editing

Assuming you have found a good picture, copy/download it to your hard drive for editing.

As a general rule it’s better to work on a full size images, and make image downsizing to 64x64 pixels the final step.

Here is an example of an interesting pic from a random website of unknown origin (http://www.worth1000.com/ is often the source of such bizarre work).

Those of you with a keen eye will have spotted that the above image is taller than it is wider - some image editing will need to be done to get our picture ‘square’, and below are 3 common ways to do just this.

1.The simplest way is to just cut-off the extra bits (cropping).

Photoshop’s ‘Crop Tool’ (shortcut C) used whilst holding down the ‘shift key’ ensures a perfect square is formed.

Notice however that we have permanently lost portions of the top and bottom of the image.

2.The second method is to shrink the bits that are too large (scaling).

Photoshop’s ‘Image Size’ (shortcut Alt + Ctrl + I) does this well.

To adjust an image’s height independently of its width: ‘Constrain Proportions’ needs to be unchecked or else one remains locked to the other (a constant aspect ratio).

Please note that it’s better to shrink larger dimensions, rather than stretching smaller dimensions, to keep the image sharp.

Play around with the re-sampling setting to find the ideal method – bicubic, sharper, smoother, etc.

You will typically find that a mix of cropping and scaling will give quick and easy results.

3. If you don’t want to crop or scale your image, you can still make it square by resizing the canvas it sits on (shortcut Alt + Ctrl + C).

Make the canvas square by bringing up the smaller size (here the width) to match the height.

This will leave a blank space on either side of the image that can be filled in with any colour (or ‘48 green’ to match the forum).

Use the ‘Paint Bucket Tool’ (shortcut G) with ‘Tolerance’ set to zero - this will ensure you are only painting the blank void, and not your actual picture.

Have A Play Around

Make your avatar more interesting by getting creative - show us your l33+ skillz0rz (ok I’ll stop that :’(

The background texture is having the ‘Smudge Tool’ (shortcut R) applied to fill the blank spaces crated from canvas resizing. An alternate method is to copy/paste bits and pieces around.

The background has been completely removed by the ‘Eraser Tool’ (shortcut E).

Some serious cropping can give you remarkably unique images - try it (just remember where the ‘Undo’ command is, shortcut Alt + Ctrl + Z).

‘Free Transform Tool’ (or rotate, shortcut Ctrl + T) is another good tool. Just because the avatar picture is square, doesn’t mean the image itself has to be.