Forum avatar sizes

[Lucid Hills]

I have noticed that there are a bunch of users that have large avatars at 200x200 which is obviously larger than the maximum 64x64.

Are these old accounts before a restriction on avatars were enforced or is there a way around the current size restriction?

[Xaiier]

This should be in the forum forum section, and as far as I can tell, only people with elevated privileges like mods/admins have larger avatars.

[Vanamonde]

This should be in the forum forum section

And now, it is.

only people with elevated privileges like mods

Indeed. Gaze with awe and envy at my majestic assemblage of pixels!

<-- Yonder.

[phoenix_ca]

You know, compared to pretty much any other forum, these restrictions are way, way overzealous. Here's a simple example of what I want as my forum avatar (which is within the 64x64 dimension limit, and it's worth noting that profile images can be huge by comparison, so this restriction makes even less sense in light of that):

Total size of max compression PNG 21,747 bytes .

So PNGs are out. In fact they're so out you shouldn't even be accepting them as a file type. It's pretty much impossible to get a PNG of this size below 20KB, namely because it includes transparency data.

JPEGs are possible but JPEG compression does a serious number on gradients, resulting in artifacting and posterization. Here's an extreme case to get the point across:

If the forum's goal is to limit file sizes by so much, then it would be better to restrict everyone to the TARGA format. With a TGA file with 16bits/pixel and RLE compression it's possible to squeeze-out the same quality as the above PNG for a mere 3KB:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5296507/!KSPForumExamples/KSP_Phoenix_av_64.tga

Sure it's not supported on browsers, but if you're really that desperate to save space then that's the most reasonable solution. Engineer a converter so that browsers see a JPEG instead. See how this "makes more sense" case is completely absurd?

There's also the niggling issue of the fact that I've written more data on these forums than any image of reasonable size I could slap on there. Assuming a paltry 100 characters of text per post (a gross underestimate), I've written over 80KB of data to the forums. And that's not even counting control characters and encoding data, let alone things like URLs and quotes. After paying for the game and being around here for so long, running into a draconian restriction measured in tens-of-kilobytes is just insulting, and absurd.

[sjwt]

I would wonder what you are using for your image manipulation.. I am using an older version of GIMP and on maximum compression I got 6.33KB, on minimum I got 16.2KB, my high quality jpg came up both smaller and nicer than yours..

This is the 6.33KB PNG version..

http://i.imgur.com/8IETYdV.png

imgur has also reduced the size of the jpg I uploaded(5.86kb) to 4.23KB and its

http://i.imgur.com/s6Y49wws.jpg

For JPG I got 625Bytes minimum quality and 5.86KB on maximum quality.

5.86KB version..

Check out this link, with all 4 files.. the only one that doesn't look good is the 625byte jpg, the other 3 all between 5.86KB and 16.2KB all look fine, too the point I cant really see a difference between my high and low quality PNGs and my High quality JPG.

http://imgur.com/a/VMHHe

PNG is a lossless image standard, unlike JPG which will compress imagers smaller but will lose quality, it has nothing to do with transparency in this image as it has no need for it, or shouldn't. If you have layered one image over another and turned on transparency then you are choosing to waste file size for no real reason.

As for the reason on the limit, we have allowed larger avatars for official representatives such as Moderators and Squad team members so they can be clearly told apart, other issues may or maynot have to do with how VB handles avatars as opposed to sigs, avatars may have higher server overhead..

You know, compared to pretty much any other forum, these restrictions are way, way overzealous. Here's a simple example of what I want as my forum avatar (which is within the 64x64 dimension limit, and it's worth noting that profile images can be huge by comparison, so this restriction makes even less sense in light of that):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5296507/!KSPForumExamples/KSP_Phoenix_av_64.png

Total size of max compression PNG 21,747 bytes .

So PNGs are out. In fact they're so out you shouldn't even be accepting them as a file type. It's pretty much impossible to get a PNG of this size below 20KB, namely because it includes transparency data.

JPEGs are possible but JPEG compression does a serious number on gradients, resulting in artifacting and posterization. Here's an extreme case to get the point across:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5296507/!KSPForumExamples/KSP_Phoenix_av_64_comp_max.jpg

If the forum's goal is to limit file sizes by so much, then it would be better to restrict everyone to the TARGA format. With a TGA file with 16bits/pixel and RLE compression it's possible to squeeze-out the same quality as the above PNG for a mere 3KB:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5296507/!KSPForumExamples/KSP_Phoenix_av_64.tga

Sure it's not supported on browsers, but if you're really that desperate to save space then that's the most reasonable solution. Engineer a converter so that browsers see a JPEG instead. See how this "makes more sense" case is completely absurd?

There's also the niggling issue of the fact that I've written more data on these forums than any image of reasonable size I could slap on there. Assuming a paltry 100 characters of text per post (a gross underestimate), I've written over 80KB of data to the forums. And that's not even counting control characters and encoding data, let alone things like URLs and quotes. After paying for the game and being around here for so long, running into a draconian restriction measured in tens-of-kilobytes is just insulting, and absurd.

Edited May 15, 2014 by sjwt