How can i change the picture size without making the quality bad ?

I make avatar pictures on imvu and i cant figure out how i could make the picture size small enough for it to fit without making it look crappy. I know it is possible because i see people with great avatar picture quality.





ThxHow can i change the picture size without making the quality bad ?
To size-down an image, scale it. Instead of just compressing it. Then save it as a PNG, not a JPEG. When scaling, make it a little bigger than you want it to be because Yahoo! makes you crop it when uploading. You can choose how to crop it (if it works the same as it did a few months ago). I'll describe how to scale something in The GIMP. Any image manipulation program should have a similar function.





1. Open your picture, then go to the Image tab in the main window.





2. Select Scale Image.





3. Bring the larger value down to 200 pixels.





4. Leave the resolution at 72x72 (or whatever it is at).





5. Select Cubic from the Interpolation drop-down menu.





6. Make sure values are linked, by means of the little chain link icons.





7. Hit the Scale button and wait.





Then you want to save it as a PNG. So go to File %26gt; Save a Copy, and name the file with a .png file extention. A dialogue will come up with compression options. Save the resolution by checking the box. Compress it to level 3 or 5 (higher if it's a huge file to begin). Then you should be golden. As long as the resulting file is 5Mb or below. If not, save another copy and compress it more.





Get GIMP from http://www.gimp.org/





P.S. Sorry, when I say make it bigger, I mean when cropping. If you want to crop. If not, Yahoo! is going to make you crop it anyway so you're out of luck. My avatar is from a much larger photo so I had it good. However! If you don't want to crop, then you can do this:





1. After scaling, open the photo again in GIMP (or whatever).





2. Go to the Select menu and choose All.





3. Go to the Edit menu and select Cut.





4. Go to the File menu and select New.





5. Make the new file larger than the image you're using. If you reduced it to 200x* then select the smallest template (640x480) and you should be fine.





6. Go to the Edit tab and select Paste.





7. Save a copy of the image again, and check that it's still under 5Mb.





P.P.S. It will still make you crop the image upon upload, but then you can just crop out the white area.