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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 12:53 am 
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Hey, people! Just for examples, can we see the difference between <20k avys and <10k avys? Just throw some out here, anything works. Animated ones can work too.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 1:52 am 
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Well, it's not so much the difference in quality between 10 KB and 20 KB avatars, but it's more of a time-related thing (for me, at least). Most PNG avatars that are around 100x100 pixels in resolution will go past the current avatar limit (10 KB) in a heartbeat, especially if there's transparency involved. It takes extra time to make these avatars compressed while not being too lossy in quality.

As for animated GIFs, the jump from 10 KB to 20 KB wouldn't be too extraordinary, and many animated images would still not work out, but basic animations at a larger resolution (like Teefee's) could work out much better with the rule.

I can take a bit of time to come up with some examples, though, but I won't do anything animated.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 2:23 am 
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Thanks Disk. Yeah, DC's having a bit of trouble seeing the point in giving the extension, so I'm trying to let him know it makes a difference to those who'd like it.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 2:40 am 
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Well, it's not the best example, but...

Here is the Earth:
Image

Apparently the Earth is 29 KB in size. This must be part of Spore or something...


If a user just wanted to resize this image, they could go to ResizePic.com and bring it to a 100x100 JPEG that easily fits within the current rule limit at 3 KB:
Image


However, let's say that they wanted the background cut off and made transparent. Well, since the Earth is a circle, it's really easy to cut out the background and save it as a transparent PNG. Here are the results:
Image
The Earth is now 21 KB in size, which would be even over the current proposed rule limit (unless we're shooting for 25 KB).

Since JPEGs don't save with transparency, we're left with three options: save it as a GIF, remove some color channels from the PNG, or shrink it.

Shrinking is for losers who don't like their home planet nearly breaking the rules, so let's try a GIF:
Image
It fits within the limits, but as you can tell, GIFs aren't too good with anti-aliasing. Rough edges are for losers who think that their home planet is made up of a bunch of noticeable pixels.

So in the end, if we wanted to retain anti-aliasing, we could use the posterizing tool to remove unused color channels from the PNG file to shrink its size. It doesn't always work efficiently, and determining the filesize can be more of a guess-and-check since I know that at least The GIMP doesn't give you a preview filesize. So after five extra experimenting minutes on an image that took me thirty seconds to originally make, I come up with this:
Image
Sexy, but you can still see a minor lack of quality shine through within the Earth portion of the image. It still looks a lot better than a GIF file, though.


Again, this is not the best example, but there are many other situations that this could be implemented in. Say, for instance, someone had an avatar that was text-based with some transparency thrown in, and it was also in color. This could potentially break the 10 KB limit, and shrinking the image or making it more jagged could be bad for once-readable text.

The issue always pops up when I'm making avatars for people. Most of the avatars that I've made here are originally around 18 KB in size, so chipping off 8 KB of such a tiny image seems kinda silly. Upping the limit to either 20 or 25 KB could reduce problems with images like these, and it would definitely not slow down your page loading a considerable amount unless your internet was in a very bad shape.


This isn't really too important, but it'd just make things a bit simpler for the Forum. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:06 am 
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ed 'lim' smilde wrote:
Also, is that avatar Ace posted from a movie or something? If so, I haven't seen it, and have no clue what's going on, which is probably why I don't get it...

Neither do I, but it looks funny.

The difference between the two is pretty much like the difference between a PNG and a JPEG

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 4:21 am 
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It appears that great success has been made on the avatar-front. According to The Rules, the limits for avatars now appears to be 20 KB. Of course, this may still be in the decision process, so eh.

Now can we make the public graffiti wall outside the Administration Building a tiny bit larger? There's too many people flocking to it every day to keep it at its current size.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:00 am 
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DS_Kid wrote:
Now can we make the public graffiti wall outside the Administration Building a tiny bit larger? There's too many people flocking to it every day to keep it at its current size.

No, then it gives that gang of TV Weather-people more space to tag "Anchors are Losers" all over it, and they have already covered 75 percent of the wall.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 3:26 pm 
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DS_Kid wrote:
Image
Image
Image
Sexy, but you can still see a minor lack of quality shine through within the Earth portion of the image. It still looks a lot better than a GIF file, though.

Image
Eh?

I exported it in Fireworks using 8 bit PNG (w/e that means) with alpha transparency, and it looks quite similar to the first one, and it's only 8 kb.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:00 pm 
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ed 'lim' smilde wrote:
Image
Eh?

I exported it in Fireworks using 8 bit PNG (w/e that means) with alpha transparency, and it looks quite similar to the first one, and it's only 8 kb.


On the computer I'm using right now, that one looks very pixel-ly around the edges. More like Disk's second earth gif-style.

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:37 pm 
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TheFacelessEvil wrote:
On the computer I'm using right now, that one looks very pixel-ly around the edges. More like Disk's second earth gif-style.

Aww, really? What browser are you using?

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:11 pm 
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ed 'lim' smilde wrote:
Aww, really? What browser are you using?


Yeah. :( I'm at work, which has IE um... the version before the newest. 6.0 ?

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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 12:18 am 
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If you have to use IE, you should at least use version 7, which doesn't have that problem.


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 Post subject: Re: Avatar size limit - Can off-site have a raise?
PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:02 am 
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It's dot com wrote:
If you have to use IE, you should at least use version 7, which doesn't have that problem.


I only have 7 at home. And now I'm home, and I see it. It looks good. :)
I can't have 7 at work yet - corporate licensing and all that.

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