Making smaller image files in PhotoShop 6.0 or 7.0

[Sacrifice]

Well, you just signed up for the forum and you picked out the perfect Avatar for yourself (the avatar is your personal icon that appears under your name). You go to upload it and uh oh! the file size is too big. What do you do?

Well, some people would make the image smaller and smaller until they can upload it. This sucks because nobody likes a tiny picture.

Soooo, here's what you do.

STEP 1:
Open your image in photoshop and to to Image/image size. Make sure your PIXEL dimmensions are within the limits. For thsi forum the maximum size is 120 by 120. Make sure the constrain proportions checkbox is checked (this makes sure your image doesn't get stretched out.)

STEP 2:
Go to File/save as. On the format drop down menu choose CompuServeGIF(*.gif). Click save. Now a new box pops up. There should be box that says colors with a number inside it. This number is the key factor in how big your image is going to be. The max number you can have for a .gif file is 256. For starters, try putting in 100. Then, click ok. Then, click ok again. Go to where you have the image saved and see if it is a small enough file (for this forum the max file size is 12k). If it is small enough, then you're done!

If it is still to big. Try saving it with a number less than 100. What you are doing is limiting the amount of Indexed Color in the formating of the .gif file. This means if you pick 100, there can only be a maximum of 100 colors in your icon. If you exceed 100, your computer will pick the next closest color to the one you have. Normally, your picture won't have all 256 available colors, thus decreasing the number is really beneficial!

Hope this helps! I'll answer any questions you might have.

You may as well use the "save for web" option in photoshop, which is generally a better Idea, since you can dither the gif file's indexed colours, and it will generally look smother.

Other than that your description was good.

=P