I ask for the maximum avatar size be increased

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I find that the maximum avatar size imposed here is far too small when it comes to both pixel-size and maximum KB size.

I've talked to many people on this site who have had much difficulty finding an avatar that he/she can properly get to work with their account, since the size-restrictions are far too small.

130x160 maximum pixel avatars which must be 15.77 KB in size is very small. The maximum pixel-size isn't so bad, but the KB size is far too small a number. A more sensible size would be to have avatars be a maximum of 150x300 pixels, with a maximum file-size of 50 KB or higher.



Hopefully the size can be increased.

Thanks.

It would be nice to have larger allowed avatar sizes.

However.

WP is already really slow. Do you really want to do anything which is going to slow down page load times?

The avatar sizes are just fine, if you want a picture to fit then alter it's dimensions in a photo-editing programme.

Yeah, pics don't really come in the right size for the restrictions, but you don't really want to slow WP up more with big avatars.
Upload your image to Picnik, they have a resize option.

No.

To take your current avatar as an example, you have saved it as a GIF. This is a mistake, as the image is photographic in nature. You should store such images as JPEG. On doing so (at 20% quality, which is fine for this image), its file size is reduced from 11,754 bytes to 2,083.

If it were really suitable for storage as a GIF, reducing the colour depth might be an option. With "gifsicle --colors=16", your image does go down to 3,268 bytes. I.e. it's still a bad idea to store a photograph as a GIF.

As to the image dimensions, this site is not about "who has the biggest avatar". The current size allows a fair degree of leeway, without allowing the avatars to dominate the page. The same argument applies to restricting the content of signatures.

I find it hard to find pics below about 100kb. I don't have the computer skills to do that changing stuff.

It's not too bad. Just go to Picnik and paste in the address of you pic ( http//www.whatever.jpg , get it by left clicking the picture, selecting 'properties' and copying). Click upload, then hit the resize button and plug in the pixel numbers or amount of bytes the site says your avatar can be. Save it, then copy that address into the url window for you avatar pic on your profile.

I struggled with it until I pieced this together.

I know that it's a 'mistake', hence why I asked for the maximum avatar-size to be increased. I don't want to have to compromise the quality of my avatars by saving them as GIFs just so I can upload them to this site. I initially attempted to get an avatar to work on this site by saving it as a JPEG in PhotoShop on various quality settings, but the KB size was always slightly too high, which prevented me from being able to upload the avatar at all.

Could you folks perhaps implement an option of being able to link to off-site avatars hosted on image-hosting websites? It would take a lot of strain off this site if that were possible.



Anyways, I'll just live with smaller avatar-sizes.

2,083 bytes
It's just a simple JPEG image - which rarely need anything like 16Kbytes.
I gather that Photoshop supplies over 14Kbytes of "bloat" to go with your image.

A lot of websites allow any size but have software that automatically reduces it for those of us who are not so computer literate - and note not everyone even HAS Photoshop. The minimum size my camera can even make is 250kb.

As has been pointed out, you don't need Photoshop. There are websites that will do it for free. You can upload the photo to Flickr and use the Thumbnail size for you avatar.

There's also a photo editor where you can crop your photo, or resize it just the size you need.

While it doesn't have a file size setting, most photos will have a small enough file size when made to fit the dimensions. Especially using the thumbnail size rather than the editor.

Others have mentioned other websites one can use.

If you save them off-site (Photobucket, Imageshack, etc.), why should file size matter? It's loading from their servers, not WP's. The only reason why it would slow it down, is if the end user had a slow connection. Also, I do agree you that WP is slower than molasses sometimes.

we host all the images because we can't control the speed of other sites and don't want sites like photobucket slowing WP down to a crawl.

http://www.irfanview.com/

That's kind of like a so-so race runner being worried that riding in a race car might be slower than walking down a decent road with no traffic...

I have a mod on my forum that i USED TO USE when size mattered. it would automatically take the image and resize it down to limits if its not already there and it would decrease quality. perhaps you lau could find that MOD for PhpBB? I remember it used to use imagemajick as a back end.