What is it?

An avatar is a two-dimensional icon (picture) that graphically represents you on the Pinside. The image you choose will be connected to your user name and shown to other Pinside users when they read your posts. An avatar should be something you feel connected to, so make sure you choose one carefully. Choosing an avatar will gain you 10 karma points.

First things first

This help text assumes that you've already created a Pinside account. Go here to read how you can create one.

How does it work?

Did you find a cool image that really represents you image on the web? Good! Let's link it to your account then. To start choosing your avatar you need to go to your 'My Pinside' section and then choose the option 'change my picture' . You can also choose this option in your 'Profile' page. You will now be presented with the 'Avatar Editor' which is still empty at this point.

Screenshot: a blank window

The first thing you need to do is to upload your selected image. Click the 'Upload thumbnail image' button. Be advised that the image may not exceed 4 MB and should be a jpg. If you don't know what this means, don't worry. Most images taken with a camera or downloaded from the internet meet these requirements. Once you clicked the 'Upload thumbnail image' button, an download dialog will appear. Now browse to the directory where you put your image and select it. Note that only jpg-files will be displayed. Click to 'open' button and your picture will be uploaded to our server.

Screenshot: an image was uploaded

If things went well, you'll see your image appear in the 'Avatar Editor' now. Now suppose you only want to use a part of the image as your image? No problem, with the 'Re-crop thumbnail' button, you can easily remove the part of the image you don't like. Actually, because an avatar should always be a square, if you uploaded a picture in the form of a rectangle, your picture will already have been cropped to the largest possible square form possible (as you can see in the screen shot above). Now suppose you would want a snapshot of the face of the marsian to be your avatar (fine taste, right?), you can decrease the size of the crop-area (in the right image box) by dragging the handles on the corner of the crop-area towards the middle one by one, till your satisfied with the result. Then click the 'Re-crop thumbnail' button and the result should appear in the left image box.

Screenshot: re-cropping a thumbnail

You can repeat this sequence untill you're satisfied. When you're done, just click the 'Okay' button and that's it. From then on onwards your avatar will be used in all your writings.