Potential for increased avatar size?

[Sidhe]

Even if it's just a donation reward or something, would it be possible to maybe increase the maximum avatar size from 50kb to 1mb? I don't really know the bandwidth constraints so I do apologize if this is a silly/impossible question or if it's been asked before. I just have a couple of pretty icons I'd love to use but they're like, 80kb. So sad. (´Д｀。)

 

[Insidious Joe]

In my experience, it's fairly easy to squeeze underneath the 50kb limit just by saving your desired avatar as a different file type like .jpeg. It also has to do with the fact that huge pictures tend to eat up file size, which can be easily averted by using a free image hosting service and re-sizing it without mucking up the picture itself.

 

[Diana]

*Points at the Judge's idea!* Saving as a different filetype will work in most cases. Except for .gifs, the world is kinda screwed when it comes to good quality gifs and filesize. D:

In this case, it's not a site issue, but a user usability issue! In theory it'd be okay, but if everyone had 1mb avatars, that's up to 20mbs of data per thread page that people have to load on screen. And that's not counting siggy images, post content, site graphics and everything else on top of it. O_O For people on computers with cable internet it won't hurt at all, but people using tablets and phones and evil high tech tiny devices, the loading time really starts to add up. We have to have filesize limits smaller where we can, so other content can load faster for members.

This is also why we remove huge-ass siggies from people that go overboard with the giant files too when we catch 'em... >>

 

[Scrap Iron]

Heh, I have to admit that when I first joined here, I was kind of shocked at the size of the avatars and more especially the signatures! Back at the last forum I used to frequent, the maximum size for avatars was 89x89 I think, with the same file size cap, and images in signatures was right out, with a maximum size of like 500 characters. Talk about culture shock!

But yeah, you can pretty easily reduce the file size of images by saving in different formats or using a photo manipulation program like Photoshop to just save at a lower quality. There are a couple websites that will crop and reduce the file size of animated gifs, too, as you can see by mine. :3

 

[Sidhe]

Ahh yeah, I know about saving them as .jpgs and/or lowering the quality, but the artifacting drives me crazy! I love my avatars to look nice and pretty and crisp. *_*

Thank you for the confirmation on the size issue though. :3 I'll just suck it up and save them in different formats. I just thought it wouldn't hurt to pose the question!

 

[Astaroth]

@Vega

You can improve image quality and reduce artifacts by using graphics programs and adjusting image quality settings rather than simply renaming the file. Generally I use Paint.NET, a very decent and user-friendly freeware program. All you have to do is open the file in the program, hit Save As, make sure the quality settings are at max and save it as a .JPEG instead of .PNG.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with how avatars save to the database on Iwaku is that the pictures are automatically resized to the standard and saved as a .JPEG, which screws with the image quality. :[ I think it's okay if it's both already a .JPEG and at precisely 192x192 but I've gotten into the habit of 200x200 so I'm not sure. The loss of quality is usually not so bad of a hit that it bothers me. @Diana, any input?

 

[Diana]

THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME.

Avatars should be fixed again to upload PROPERLY at 200x200. >:[ they weren't supposed to be resizing to 192 like that.