Avatar compression help?

Hi all, bit of an odd post I know but it seems lots of people here are Photoshop savvy. Have a piccy I wanted to make my new avatar, but no matter what I do with it in Photoshop I can't reduce the file size anywhere near the 19.5KB limit. It is an 80KB file and the smallest I can get it is 45ish, that's by cropping the main part of the photo in the centre, then reducing the pixel height and width, then saving in a poorer quality.

Other people seem to have quite detailed stuff in their avatars and I can't work out why I can't get this to work



Anyone able to help out/tell me what Photoshop tools I can use to shrink it while keeping it readable?

Ta in advance

Cut it down to about 130 by 130 px and then use Save for Web, not save.

Aha, never even saw that there was an option along those lines. How does that differ then in the way it saves the file? Just out of curiosity.

EDIT: Will try it out after dinner, have to use the other PC, no Photoshop on here.

Dont know, except its worked for me on all kinds of weeby stuff.

Cheers Dr Rich, worked like a charm. By using that option I was able to swap it from being a GIF to a JPG which saved a lot of memory instantly and let me make the image bigger with the extra space.

Thanks a lot

[Stingo]

Hmmm...save for web...so that's how it's done...

[Richie]

Thank you for posting this, as You've just helped me out too.

Try saving as 'gif'

Originally Posted by Stingo

Hmmm...save for web...so that's how it's done...

Depends which version and how it's been set up. "Save for web" greyed out on my v7. Photoshop's not really that great at compressing stuff for the web. There's a companion app that ships with most versions of photoshop called Imageready. This is what you should be using for web work.

geeks...