Making an Avatar with the Combination of Adobe Photoshop and MSPaint


Introduction: I've been asked, "How do you make your avatars?" many times. So this tutorial basically reveals how I make my avatars--with a combination of Adobe Photoshop and MSPaint. MSPaint is a plain program compared to Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, but with it's tools, I find it very handy in making avatars. The only disadvantage with MSPaint is that I can't save the graphic as a transparent .gif--that's where Adobe Photoshop comes in.

NOTE! People have told me this several times: "How come you use Adobe PS and MSPaint? You could just use Adobe PS to design your avatar, fully." I am well aware of that, but with MSPaint's "extra pencil tools," I just find it more easy for me to use MSPaint to apply those transparent designs instead of Adobe. Remember: this tutorial is about how I create my avatars. But I know there are a few others ways to go about avatar-making, too.

(** Note 2: You can click some "thumbnail" images, below, for their full view)

Step 1: First, find a picture that you'd like to make an avatar of. Right click and "Copy" it from the webpage it's on. Once you have done so, open your Adobe Photoshop program...and then go to File-->New. A new window will popup with the sizes of what the new document will be sized like. You don't really have to do anything with that, since the sizes of the new document should correspond with the image you just copied; simply click "OK" then "Paste" the image you copied earlier into the blank document. The new, "Untitled" document should now contain the picture you had copied earlier. As shown below, ofcourse your image will be different from mines:


So far so good? For me, I've chosen to make an avatar out of Chii from Chobits.

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Step 2: Now with your rectangular marquee tool (look for the icon that shows a dotted outline of a square--select it), go over the place that you want to make the avatar out of (with your mouse, no doubt). It's kind of like highlighting....except you're outlining the place that you want to make your avatar out of--usually the face of the image. To make sure you're outlining your desired place as a perfect square, press the "Shift" key down as you do the outlining. It doesn't matter how big you make the outline--we're going to be resizing the image later. Your outlining should look similar to the below:


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Step 3: Before we resize the picture, we need to square things down to the selected area (your chosen area in the previous step). To do that, go to Image-->Crop; as shown below:


Once you press 'Crop', you're done with step 3. Your image should look similar to mines below -- only the area you had selected earlier is there:


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Step 4: To resize the image go to Image-->Image Size. Then a window will popup, asking what you want to resize your image down to. Just simply go to "Width" and enter in 60 (pixels)--or choose whatever size you want your avatar to be. I'm choosing 60 pixels. You don't need to do anything for the "Height" since if you change the "Width", the "Height" will adjust, too. As shown below:


Once you press 'OK' your image should be resized just like how you requested.



Let's move on to the next page.