How to Create a Photo Avatar

Use This Free Program to Personalize Your Presence in Internet Forums

For quite some time, I used an avatar from Associated Content's library of free stock photos. Their picture of a coffee mug with the Associated Content logo on it is a popular one in the forum, and so are several other avatars, but these photo avatars don't show the personality of the individual content producer the same way a personal photograph would. Most participants in Associated Content's forum, along with many other forums across the internet, have photo avatars of themselves, their pets, children, a favorite flower or some other personal glimpse of who they are. I tried creating my own photo avatar by editing a picture of myself in Windows Paint program, but all the pictures I used ended up distorted when I uploaded them to Associated Content. After much trial and error, I began looking for a program that I could use to crop my photo to the perfect avatar size.

Most of the websites that are available for creating an avatar do so by helping you design a cartoon that you can use. I wanted to use my own photo, but didn't want to pay an exorbitant fee for PhotoShop or some other photo editing program. As I searched, I found a website called Shrinkpictures.com. This website allows users to upload a photo and shrink it down to a specific size - for free. All you have to do is go into the control panel of your forum or other website to see the required pixel size of the avatar. Associated Content's avatars are 72 pixels square.

Once you know the pixel size you need, just go to www.Shrinkpictures.com/create-avatar, upload the photo by clicking on the "Browse" button and selecting the photo you want to use for your avatar, next set the desired size of the avatar you are trying to create (72 pixels for Associated Content), then click "Resize" and wait for the program to do its thing. It's quick and easy, and you end up with a perfectly-sized photo avatar to use in Associated Content and other internet forums and websites.