Signature sizes

[Gand]

Guys... please remember that some unfortunate souls here are still on dialup modems, and 200kB signature images (even if they are 500x120) suck to download. Please pay attention to the red text in the signature area that says:

Signature images must not exceed 500 pixels in width, 120 pixels in height, and 50kB file size.

We have an automated script that goes through and checks for compliance. It only checked the dimensions before but now it checks for the filesize too. There's a LOT of you with big signatures, so for 1 week I'm setting it to enforce at 75kB, then I'll lower it to 50kB.

If you get a friendly message in your signature, please do what it says and shrink it! If you use Photoshop, File -> Save for Web will show you exactly how big the file will be. It is very easy to compress a 500x120 image to under 50kB or lower without any artifacting. For example, mine is 500x112 and only 26kB. I set the JPEG compression to 8 when saving.

[Kou]

For futher compression, Gif it. The quality may go down depending on how flashy the sig is, but you can kick down something that's 100kb jpeg into like 22kb

[Neko Koneko]

It al depends on what a sign looks like. Often enough GIF is bigger than JPEG

[Spoonpuppet]

Well.. if your sig consists of few colours, you should use gif. If it uses loads of colours and blends a lot, use jpeg. That's what I find anyway..

[Hiei]

For people who do not know how big their signature is, right click on your signature and click on properties. Look at the size. The size is usually measured by bytes so count in the thousands to see how many kilobytes your image has.

[Marty-kun]

I wanna to upload an image from my computer to my signature, but they ask me the URL!

[Spoonpuppet]

Although you can upload avatars to the forum itself, you have to host the signature images by yourself. If you have an account with Photobucket.com, you can link to the image once you've uploaded it to your account.

[Marty-kun]

And if I haven't that account?

[Spoonpuppet]

Er... then find somewhere else to host your images. The point is, you can't upload signature images to the forum. Loads of people here use Photobucket.com, and it's free.

[Sondagger]

And if I haven't that account?

Imageshack doesn't require you to join.

[toki]

oh what?! 500x120?! i thought it was 500x100 XD ohwellz.. no harm in makin it smaller

[RD]

I find that Photobucket is to strict and Imageshack has a really long load time. Use http://xs.to instead.

[Neko Koneko]

How is photobucket strict? :mellow:

[Stinger]

I think photobucket is fine... Free and easy

[RD]

The size restrictions for PhotoBucket is really small. Its good if your only going to do smaller Sigs and Avas, but if you do larger art..

*SHRINK*

[mystery_editor]

Ever heard of Imagecave (http://www.imagecave.com/)? They have never given me any problems, and they don't automatically shrink the pictures unless you tell it too.

[Neko Koneko]

The size restrictions for PhotoBucket is really small. Its good if your only going to do smaller Sigs and Avas, but if you do larger art..

*SHRINK*

Who gives? 250 KB is very decent for web images. If your images are larger then you must be doing something wrong or you are trying to post ridiculously huge pictures.