Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

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Barry Burton
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Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Barry Burton »

Would it be possible to up the limit on filesize for uploaded avatars, please? I understand that nobody really wants huge flashing 300 kb GIF's but a little more headroom in file size would be appreciated. Selfishly, I just want to change my avatar to one that I've spent ages farting about on to celebrate Pac-Man's birthday but the smallest I can make it is 100x100 at 12.4 kb without ruining it. Gutted.

If it's not possible (bandwidth, etc) I understand. Just thought I'd ask. Waka waka (^.^) !
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Rachael
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Rachael »

I increased it to 40kb. The biggest point of caution is that the hard drive space on the server is really not that big, so tens of thousands of members all having 40kb avatars (which, realistically, would never happen, but you have to understand actual potentials when making these decision) can quickly become a problem.

That being said, you can link it off-site, such as to imgur, if you need more space.
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Barry Burton
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Barry Burton »

Thanks so much. I actually felt a bit daft posting after I hit the submit key. Afterall, it's only a wee picture on a forum and I'm sure you've got better things to do with your time. I'm glad my request wasn't met with a "no", though, I feel less silly now. :P
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Enjay »

Although, with minimal visual quality loss, converting your image to 256 colours made it 3.21kb and running it through the PNG tools brought it down to 3.03kb. ;)

Image

The conversion to 256 colours could be tweaked a bit to make the changes less obvious - I just used the defaults in Paint Shop Pro.
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Barry Burton
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Barry Burton »

Oops. Aaand my sense of daftness comes back with a vengeance!

I don't really know what I'm doing with this stuff. I'm just floundering around with Paint.net but I'm getting there, I think.

Thanks for the tip, though. I'm sure it'll come in handy in future. I might give PSP a try. I'm an old git, my only real experience is DPaint on the Amiga. I've got a lot to catch up on!
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Enjay »

Paint Shop Pro suits us "old gits" anyway. Image

The last really useful version of PSP for Sprite editing was version 7.04 (which I think maybe goes back as far as 2001). After that, the original company that made it (Jasc) was taken over by Corel who kept the PSP name, but changed the program into a bloated mess of a Photoshop Wannabe.
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Kappes Buur »

I thought this was the last version

[imgur]https://i.imgur.com/uJ560Sp[/imgur]

before Corel bought Jasc.

But now, Paint.net comes closest and it is freeware, complements PSP quite nicely.
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Enjay »

I'd forgotten about 8. There was actually a PSP9 from Jasc too. Somehow though, 7.04 seems to be regarded as the best of the simpler versions. I have tried 9 and it didn't offer much more in the way of advantages but it was beginning to pick up baggage.

You have to remember though, I started using PSP at version 1 where it was nothing more than a graphics conversion program that supported more formats than most other similar tools. All the editing stuff came later. :)
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by leileilol »

Yeah i've used PSP when it evolved. Back in '94, PSP and CompuShow were some of the only popular apps in the imageformat game. Neopaint was more capable for doing the editing than PSP at one point, but only did PCX. PSP3 would take inspiration from ZSoft PhotoFinish for all the painting tools.


I thought PSP7 was one of the bloaty versions, I prefer 5, which is like 4 but it does layers, mousewheels, and tablets. It also debuted probably the first intuitive animated gif maker ever (Compare that to Gif Construction Set). The only time I don't use 5 is when there's super large images.

also psp7 changed the brightness algorithms for some reason.


I have a similar old preference about versions of Cool Edit too. Cool96 FOREVER
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Enjay »

So many memories in that list of programs. I used them all. Add DPaint and Graphics Workshop Pro in there and I think we have covered just about all of the early graphics programs that I used.

As I recall, PSP5 was good but it had an annoying bug that made it crash for me. If I had selected something, then unselected, then pressed undo twice, it would crash if the second undo was done quickly. Basically, I had to wait until the selection marker appeared and started animating before pressing undo again. Pressing before that caused a crash. Over 20 years ago and I still remember how to make it happen - which indicates how annoying it was.
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leileilol
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by leileilol »

I've never had that crash, must've been fixed by 5.01... The only crashes I can recall were for memory usage reasons with either too many layers or super huge images.
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by CeeJay »

Enjay wrote:Paint Shop Pro suits us "old gits" anyway. Image
Heck, I was using 5.0 up until recently. Had to upgrade to 7.0 when it started behaving screwy on my modern system. I still like 5.0 better, though.

EDIT: Never encountered that bug either, and I used the program for over ten years.
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by Enjay »

Weird, I got the bug on several computers. Oh well.

What I have noticed is that even PSP 7.04 is really finally starting to creak at the edges. Its PNG support has always been a bit basic (coming out just as the format was becoming popular) but there are also certain types of graphics (some jpg files for example - though I'm not sure what's unusual about them) that it has been failing to open when GIMP handles them just fine, webp - no support, a few of the hotkeys don't always work (and one that I used to use all of the time is now used by Win10 so that doesn't work) and a few other minor problems. Mostly it's fine and does its job as well as it ever did but I think that the writing is on the wall for it. I still use it several times every single day though, so I am not looking forward to having to move on to something else when it eventually becomes unusable.
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Re: Increase File Size for Avatars on Forum?

Post by leileilol »

At least there's Photoshop plugin support for loading/saving files though that's hit or miss too. CoolEdit96 also had filters for loading/saving other (and far more modern than 1996) file formats so that's still useful for ogg/flac and the like.

Probably the weirdest obscure bug of PSP is how it saves TGA files. 32-bit RGBA TGAs always have a 24-bit header, so this would throw off a few header-strict things from reading the alpha channel data.
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