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4 edits | Paint Shop Pro Tutorial for Avatars Considering that the images are dead, and some of the avatar info is out of date from this tutorial by Hey Girl, I thought I would do a new one.
This tutorial should work for most versions of Paint Shop Pro.
Lets say you find a photo you really like, for example, a lion that is yawning.
First thing's first, you need to crop it. The more you keep, the less resolution the avatar has so crop it to just what you need. For example, crop the lion to just the face. Be sure to keep the sides square so it will be easier to resized to 40x40 pixels.
To crop, select the crop tool, then draw the square.
Once cropped, it should look smilier to the below.
When shrunk, detail is lost and colors clash, so you want to adjust the brightness and contrast. On the bar that also contains "File" there is "Adjust". Select this and then you'll see the second choice is "Brightness/Contrast". Select that and the first thing that will pop up in the next menu is "Brightness/Contrast". Select this. Up the brightness and contrast until the image is brilliant but still has okay colors.
Because this image is fairly bright as it is, I did not apply any Brightness/Contrast to it.
Now the image is ready to resize. On the bar at the top that also contains "File" select "Images". Next, find "Resize" and click that. You'll get a pop-up like when you were adjusting brightness and contrast. At the bottom, make sure "Resize all Layers" and "Lock aspect ratio of ####" are checked. Go to the top and select the bubble for Pixel Size. Change the width to 40; the height should change automatically. Make sure the height is 40. If its a little outside 40, you can still resize it then crop out the extra pixels. If its too small or way too large, go back and change the area you crop. After resizing, you should have a successful avatar.
Once resized, the image will look a little fuzzy and the detail not as crisp, I almost always add "Unsharp Mask".
It can be found in PSP 8 at, Adjust> Sharpness> Unsharp Mask.
In my case I added a Radius= 2, Strength= 45 and Clipping= 5.
With the final result looking like below.
If you want a transparent avatar, I started with the larger image. select a brilliant color and color in all that you want to be transparent. For the lion, I used pink.
MAKE SURE THIS COLOR IS YOUR BACKGROUND COLOR!!!
Select "File" at the top of the gray bar. In the menu select "Export", then select "GIF Optimizer" and you'll get pop-up window. Then click at the bottom on "Use Wizard. You'll get another pop-up window.
First, make sure the bubble in the middle "Convert matching colors to transparent". The color should be the color you used to fill in what you want to be transparent!
Follow the steps in the gif below.
The last step is to save it as a GIF. When saving, only type the name without the ".gif" ending or else you'll get an error.
Now resize as in the steps above.
This is what I get once I resized.
I hope this gives a little idea of how to make an avatar.
If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.
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