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From:
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Instructions for donors to upload picture
Posted:
Nov 18, 2005, 3:29 PM
I have gotten questions on this somewhat frequently, so here are some details to help donors upload pictures to their profiles at DSG.
First of all, you need a picture of yourself, or whatever you want. The picture must be in a certain format, pictures on computers are stored different ways. The most common types on the internet are GIF, JPG and PNG, so those are the ones that DSG supports. You can usually tell which type of picture you have by its file extension, the picture name might be picture.gif, picture.jpg or picture.png for example. If the picture you want to use is a different format, you might be able to convert it using an image program (see below).
Now, the next issue is the picture must be sized correctly, it must be less than 200 pixels wide and less than 200 pixels high. The picture must also have a file size that is less than 35kb. If you don't know how big 200 pixels is, look at the picture in my profile, it is the maximum size allowed, that will give you a rough estimate.
If you have a large picture, you will need to crop out just your head or just the area you want to use, and then you might have to resize the image to make it small enough so that it's less than 200x200 pixels. To do so you need an image program. There are many different products you can use for this.
A very simple one is Microsoft Paint, I only recommend this since it should be installed on anyone's computer who has Microsoft Windows. To access it go to Start |Run.. and type "mspaint". It is such a simple program it is actually harder to do cropping so keep that in mind.
I usually use a program called Paint Shop Pro, you can find an evaluation version at http://www.jasc.com . It can do alot of fancy stuff but I think it is also fairly easy to use. Photoshop from Adobe is another popular program and like I mentioned, there are many more, try google.
In most programs there is a button that is a rectangle with a dashed line, when you click that then you can "select" an area of your picture using your mouse. You can then do various things with the selected area (copy it, cut it, fill it with a color, etc.) You can use this to select your head that is 200x200 pixels and then "crop" (you can tell your selection size is 200x200 usually by looking at the bottom right of the image program, it should display the size of the current selection there). Most programs have a way to crop, which just removes everything in the picture except for your selection. In Microsoft paint you have to do it by copying and pasting the selection to a new image that is sized correctly. If the image you selected is still too big, then you can resize it, most image programs let you do this by selecting "resize" from one of the menus. In MS Paint, use "Image|Stretch/Skew". Then just save the image to a file on your computer. If you need to convert the image to a compatible type for DSG, usually when you save the image you can choose one of a bunch of image formats.
Now, you've got your image ready, so go to DSG. Login and then click "My Profile". Then click the "Donor Settings" tab. Find the area that says "Upload New Picture" and click the "Browse..." button. In the window that pops up, navigate on your computer to the file you just saved and click the "Open" button. Now, click the "Save Changes" button on the DSG web page, if you did everything right the file will be uploaded and will appear on your profile at DSG! If not, there will be an error message telling you the problem, so try again!
If you have additional questions please let me know! -dweebo
Posts:
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Mar 4, 2007
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Re: Instructions for donors to upload picture
Posted:
Jan 24, 2011, 10:39 AM
to dweebo, the last i knew, you had raised the file size limit much above the previous 35kb. something like 4MB if i recall correctly. this was to allow gif animations with several frames to run as a avatar.
what is the current file size limit set to?
thanks, z
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