A lion is a powerful image to use as an avatar.
An avatar is a personal representation of yourself that is used to identity you on Internet message boards and chat sites. Since using a personal photo can be unflattering or even downright dangerous, selecting another symbol or image to become your avatar is a good idea. Lions make excellent avatars and can symbolize many concepts, from the Zodiac sign of Leo to the Lion of Judea of the Christian faith.
Instructions
1. Determine the size specifications for avatars on the website or chat program. These will often consist of a pixel dimension, such as 100 by 100 pixels, and a file size given in kilobytes. Write down these dimensions so you will have them while you are creating your lion avatar.
2. Locate a lion image you would like to make into an avatar. If you do not have a lion image that you have created yourself, such as an original drawing or photograph, then you can search for images licensed under Creative Commons (see Resources). These are images that have been authorized for use by their creators. Once you have selected an image, right-click on it to save it to the desktop. If the name is long or difficult to remember, right-click on the file to enter a new name.
3. Open the image in a graphics editing program. Any program that can resize, crop and save an image will work. Popular choices include MS Paint, GIMP and Adobe Photoshop.
4. Resize your image so that the part of the image you wish to use is larger or smaller. This process will vary based on your image editing program, but check under options such as "Image Options" or "Image" for this capability.
5. Select the crop tool and enter the dimensions of your avatar, both width and height. This will allow you to crop the image to precisely the pixel size required by the avatar. Click on the upper left part of the area you want to use as an avatar, then drag so the cropping lines appear. Once the crop area is the right size and centered over the area you wish to use as an avatar, crop the image.
6. Select "File" from the top toolbar, then pick "Save As" to open the save dialogue box. If you are using a program with a "Save For Web" option, use this instead. Enter a file name for your avatar and select the location where your file is to be saved. For "Save As Web" users, choose the image quality and make sure that the file size in kilobytes is equal to or less than the one specified by your website. Once your avatar is saved, you will be ready to upload it to the Web.
Tags: your avatar, crop image, editing program, file size, image that