Thread: How 2 create your own CUSTOMISED AVATAR without using Photoshop/design based software

Ok, this is a very basic, simple tutorial. Since the avatar limits have been increased, I thought few of you'd be interested in customizing an avatar even if you don't use Photoshop or GIMP or such software.

First you'll have to download Photo resizer. Do it from here -

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

Install it. Then select a picture/wallpaper you'd like as your avatar - the smaller the picture (by small I mean around 600 x 800, not 50 x 50) the better clarity you'll get. As an example I have taken this -



The size is 661 x 816 which I have cropped from a 1024 x768 pixel wallpaper using this software (iQuick screen capture) which you can download from here -

Free Download !Quick Screen Capture & Screen Recorder - best screen capture software.

Once you've cutout the picture to a suitable size, open photo resizer and load the picture & then



Tick 'Use Advanced Options (Resize...)' -




Then click Advanced Options -




Next tick Resize. Increase New Width & New Height to 150 & 250 respectively as shown in the picture. Also tick preserve aspect ratio or you'll get an uneven picture. If your avatar character is centered in the picture, then you can tick 'Smart Cropping'. -




Then click Text, and tick 'Add Text'. You can make font, offset, opacity and position changes as you see fit - experiment and see what you like. Then click ok.



There are many more features - rotate, crop, canvas, color depths, adjustments, dpi & border, all that add different features to your avatar, experiment with them to vary and add effects to your avatar, for this tutorial I'm going to have an extremely simple avatar.


Rename the new avatar. Add a # before the name, the software will request it anyway.



Final step is select an output folder (which I have done before itself) and click 'Convert' -



And that's it. Your avatar is done! Wow. It seems like a lot when I explain it - try it out, it takes barely a minute or two. Hope this tutorial has been useful. This is the final result (Image size is 150 x 184, If you had selected the 'smart crop' option in the resize menu you'd get exactly 150 x 250, but that'd have chopped of Abel Nightroad's gun and robes since the image is not centered) -

Nice little tutorial, lots of people don't like to use photoshop so this is a good alternative.

:D

thanks, i was always looking for a short and sotoshop.weet way to resize pics without busting out hefty photoshop.

Hey good one, I messed around with it for 10min or so very easy way of doing it.

Chunky!

Excellent little app, can finally make my own avatar without having to ask someone to do it for me.

:laugh: I keep surfing for open source & free softwares, happened to stumble upon this. Nice little app!

nice tutorial....but i've found that i can do the same stuff on MS Powerpoint as well...so i dont feel the need to install any additional software on my system...

thanks for the info though...good to know there is a backup solution when powerpoint (not too many features there) fails!

Rep added. Its very helpful for nubs like me

good job man