Powerpoint Pixelization

[Uncle Festy]

I make avatars on Power Point. On my computer, the avatars look great, and have very good resolution. However, on other computers (mainly PCs) the resolution is horrible, and they come out looking pixelated and cruddy. Does anyone have any clue what's going on here?
Thanks,
-Uncle Out

[Dallas-Dakota]

To my knowledge, making avatars on powerpoint is terrible, even paint would be better.

Just for a few things,

1 Becouse all images(self-made or other) in Powerpoint are not ment to be used in any other program.

2 Becouse Powerpoint is a slideshow program, not an art program...

[Lyinginbedmon]

Wow. A triple post 15 minutes from start to finish... :smalleek:

[Omicroncubed]

Dallas watch the triple posts please.

My reccomendation would be to either:

1. Use paint for avatars using the help of this guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33471) or
2. Download inkscape and use this guide (http://trazoi.net/tutorials/inkscape/oots/index.html) to draw good avatars.

Like Dallas said, Powerpoint is no program to draw with. Instead try making a slideshow or something with it. One of my latest creations would be a mouse game where you navigate your mouse and not hitting the walls. In my own opinion, I don't think I've done anything better with powerpoint than...

...

*cough* sorry fell off subject there again.

[Uncle Festy]

Which would be fine, if my computer had any sort of Paint program or I could download Inkscape.
If someone can actually explain to me why making images with Powerpoint's extensive and precise object-based drawing program, which uses images that can be quickly and easily saved as PNGs, cannot be used for drawing, I would be much obliged. :smalltongue: Also, an explaination of the Pixelization (what I was asking for, not a deferral to Inkscape) would be much appreciated.
-Uncle Out

[Omicroncubed]

Which would be fine, if my computer had any sort of Paint program or I could download Inkscape.
If someone can actually explain to me why making images with Powerpoint's extensive and precise object-based drawing program, which uses images that can be quickly and easily saved as PNGs, cannot be used for drawing, I would be much obliged. :smalltongue: Also, an explaination of the Pixelization (what I was asking for, not a deferral to Inkscape) would be much appreciated.
-Uncle Out

Is the original picture of your avatar bigger than 120x120? :smallconfused:

If it is, you should shrink it. If not, I'm not sure what's the problem then.

[Uncle Festy]

It 'tis indeed.
Here's the fullsized version of my avvy:
http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd293/Uncle_Festy/UncleFesty.png
Also keep in mind that the confusing part is that it looks fine on my computer, but not on anyone else's.

[ufo]

The full-sized version looks fine to me - or is it only the shrinked version that seems to be the problem? 'Cause that one is indeed pixealiaziated (whatever). Note that this is not my home computer, but another one using Linux and Firefox - the issue could well the the internet browser that people use. Or the file format with which you save your avatar from Power Point.

[Mysticaloctopus]

Okay, it'll be how powerpoint saves the images that's screwing them. I recommend you zoom/resize so they appear right on your computer, then take a screenshot and paste it into paint. It'll save you some hassle later on. Just remember to have the paint background coloured right, the background color in the palette set to white and transparent palette BG colour on. Then when you paste, you paste onto the right BG colour. In my experience, powerpoint is terrible because it snaps things to the nearest 8th pixel or so, making anything approaching accurate impossible.

[Bryn]

The problem is that you are using a large image in a 120px square space. To fit the image into the space, the browser must shrink the picture down to the proportions given, and since it uses a rather poor scaling algorithm, this results in a pixellised picture. The solution is to make a .png image that is sized at 120 by 120 pixels or smaller. This will mean the browser will not have to shrink the picture to make it fit into your avatar slot.

I don't know how well Powerpoint's export function works, but it should be possible to export at a smaller size. Make sure both dimensions are 120px or less. If this isn't possible, download an image editor like the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) or IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) and use that to resize the image. This will make a smaller image with a lot better quality than the browser's resize creates.

[Jimorian]

A trick I discovered a long time ago that probably has no bearing on the topic, but might prove helpful/interesting in other ways.

A lot of graphics programs these days are good about "resampling" and "antialiasing" when you resize an image, but a while back when I was scanning some line drawing (like a comic strip from a paper, or some of my own pen/ink drawings) I discovered something interesting.

The best first step before shrinking an image was to blur the image -- something completely opposite of the instinct to sharpen instead. The fuzziness in the larger size image gave the basic graphic program I had at the time enough data around the hard lines to interpolate some nice blending pixels around the lines to avoid the stair-step effect that happens during resizing.

I now understand that I was manually providing an anti-aliasing solution, but this trick might still come in handy in cases where you can't control some of the factors of the presentation on the user's end.

[Uncle Festy]

Thank you all for your help! I actually have a premade smaller version that I'd like to try, but I need to find out the exact size. Does anyone know how I could do that?
Scratch that. Does the avatar look better now?
-Uncle Out