Transparent Portions of PNG files are not preserved for avatars.

[KrazyKrl]

With the change to the new forum software, the old avatars were downscaled to atrocious quality; requiring a higher-res reupload.

Since the forums only allow a square image not exceeding 0.25MB; and my avatar is a weird aspect ratio... I was forced to add padding to either side (I did not want to crop the Admiral's flippers.)

 

 

This is the image I used as my avatar, I believe the forums itself transcode and save its own version of the avatar for local use on the server. And unless I am mistaken, transparency is not preserved in the conversion. And transparency would be nice to keep weird aspect ratio avatars from requiring solid color padding or cropping, especially if an image is used for the "cover photo" banner image on your profile (like mine which is part of the HubbleUDF.)

Edited November 30, 2015 by KrazyKrl

[KrazyKrl]

Bumping this, because it only has 21 views as of right now (and it's been over a week.) No comments either way about this problem. I'd imagine this is tied to IPS trans-coding the avatars to jpg or something, so I'm not that optimistic about any available fix (since it's probably tied to the backend of IPS.)

[Red Iron Crown]

IPS doesn't change avatar encoding, it stays .jpg, .png or .gif at the same resolution as uploaded.  I just pulled the copy of your avatar from your user info block (same file that shows on the profile page), it's a png with transparent sidebars. I think what is happening is that the background for some avatar boxes is white.

[Kerbart]

Confirming that the PNG is transparent, it just seems to be drawn against a white backdrop. Completely negating the ability to upload pictures with transparency in the process.

Best solution at this point: using some mad Photoshop skillz to add some content left & right and make it a square picture.

[Starwhip]

20 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

IPS doesn't change avatar encoding, it stays .jpg, .png or .gif at the same resolution as uploaded.  I just pulled the copy of your avatar from your user info block (same file that shows on the profile page), it's a png with transparent sidebars. I think what is happening is that the background for some avatar boxes is white.

Huh. You're right. Odd.

[Red Iron Crown]

14 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Confirming that the PNG is transparent, it just seems to be drawn against a white backdrop. Completely negating the ability to upload pictures with transparency in the process.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, the ability to upload pictures with transparency works fine. If you were to change the theme with Stylish or something the background would show through properly.

[Kerbart]

10 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this, the ability to upload pictures with transparency works fine. If you were to change the theme with Stylish or something the background would show through properly.

Actually, if you change the theme with Stylish the background does not show through properly.

It becomes more visible when you check  a users' profile page:

Those white bars? They're not in the avatar image. And I doubt they were in the background image @KrazyKrl uploaded.

Those same bars show up in the avatar on the left side. They're not immediately visible because the left bar in the forum is white, but once you change that, with say, Stylish, they become visible.

[Red Iron Crown]

You need to change the background color of the avatar box, too. The avatar box is not transparent by default. There are no white bars added to avatar images.

[Kerbart]

Background color of the avatar box? So the avatar box is not transparent?

And where does one set the background color of the avatar box?

Edit: Unless you mean in Stylish — the profile page was shown without Stylish. And yet there's white bars...

Edited December 9, 2015 by Kerbart

[Red Iron Crown]

In your Stylish config, I guess.

[Kerbart]

Ah, But what if you don't use Stylish? How to get rid of the white bars?

[Red Iron Crown]

My point was and is that it's not correct to say that IPS does not preserve transparency in PNGs, since it clearly does. If white bars are not desired, then either change the background with Stylish or use a square avatar.

[KrazyKrl]

It just never occurred to me that the actual CSS frame wasn't transparent, since dragging the image was dragging the background-colored frame with it; making it seem like the image didn't have transparency (when the image on the page itself does).

Such a silly fix, for such a small problem.

.ipsUserPhoto {background-color: transparent}