I can't get my avatar to look nice, how come??

It looks blured and I've tried several things with several editors but I can't get it to look right, what am I doing wrong??




This is the original, and on my pc it looks quite nice.

 

what program do you use . If its photoshop, when saving Save for Web .. make sure the quality is set to 100%

 

Hrm...The "original" and your avatar look the same to me?

 

DONT save it as a JPEG. What you're seeing is called 'artefacting' and it happens when you save images according to the JPEG standard.

For your image, you don't require any compression to be applied, save your image as a PNG, or if you absolutely must, as a GIF (not preferred).

JPEG is only acceptable to save a full-colour photograph, and even then, only as a final copy. That's what it's designed for, and that's still what it does best.

PNG is designed for images that are designed, and is specifically made with the web in mind. It is 100% lossless, and saves smaller file sizes than an equivalent GIF (old old format that now thanks to PNG has no use, but wide support)

 

Right now your avatar looking fine.BTW i can help you if you have any problem

 

I started from scratch and saved it as png and so far it looks fine. Still a bit bright and painful on the eyes but so far I'm pretty happy with it.

Thanks a lot guys!! I really appreciate it.

 

Have you try save as GIF 128 dithered (see my avatar)

 

GIF is a small file size because it has a maximum palette of 256 colours, but if you save a PNG with the same palette size (256), both formats are lossless and provide 100% quality, but the PNG file format is actually smaller. From photoshop you can get the smallest saves from the 'save for web and devices' dialog box found from the file menu.

Don't take my word for it, try it yourself. PNG is a FAR superiour format, look it up and use it to its full potential!

EDIT: here's me re-saving your PNG avatar to the smallest GIF and smallest PNG I could while still keeping full quality:

 

Do you try to save it in PNG?

 

I think if you view the properties of his avatr you'll find it's currently an un-optimized PNG, likely embedded with a thumbnail preview or saved with a (empty) transparency layer he doesn't need for this image.

He's essentially using 2 colours, and subtle shades inbetween them (antialiasing) so 256 colours ought to be more than enough.

Saving an efficient PNG is always smaller than even the best GIF has to offer, but unlike GIF, PNG also has support FAR beyond simply 256 colours, and also has full support for variable transparency, GIF only has fully transparent or fully opaque.

 

innovati apparently has a love thing going on with .PNG =)

Fortunately he is absolutely correct, there's no reason to be using another format here.

 

"with a (empty) transparency layer" this could be right... I'm by far an expert, i only know the basics of Photoshop and PSP, just enough to cut and paste

When I saved the avatar, Photoshop also asked for PNG saving options Interlace None or Interlaced; what does this mean?

 

Do you remember a long time ago, when you used to view a picture online and it would load maybe one of every few lines all the way down the picture, then it would load the second revision and everything would get a bit clearer.....then if you had a fast dialup modem after a few more seconds it would get clearer again?

That's interlacing. It's used especially where there is slow transfer, so the end-user can preview most of the image without having to download the ENTIRE thing.

If you don't save it with interlacing (as most of us do now) the image will load from the top down at full quality, line-by-line. Which can be annoying.

Technically interlacing yields a better viewing expereince on a slow slow slow connection becqause although the image is not clear, it is there and the size it will be when it's loaded. I never save my images this way, and I'm not sure of the effect on file-size but I can't imagine a non-interlaced image would be bigger.

Hope this helps!

 

Ahaa that makes sense. Thanks a lot for this explanation.

 

Any time for you DutchMan ;-)