Creating Your Avatar in Picnik

• 1). Visit picnik.com and click the green "Get Started Now!" button in the middle of the page.
  
  
• 2). Click "Upload a Photo!" on the right.
  
  
• 3). Locate the image you'd like to turn into a LiveJournal avatar on your hard drive. Double-click the image to open it in Picnik.
  
  
• 4). Click "Crop" in the "Edit" tab across the top menu. An adjustable grid appears on the photo. The content inside the grid is the part of the image Picnik will use.
  
  
• 5). Drag the borders of the grid to a square shape by clicking on the borders and moving your cursor around while holding down the mouse button. Drag the grid so the inner contents of the grid show the part of the photo you'd like to keep as your avatar.
  
  
• 6). Type in equal pixel sizes for the height and width in the "Actual Size" fields at the top to get a perfect square shape.
  
  
• 7). Click "OK" to crop your image to the size and shape you've selected.
  
  
• 8). Edit the image to your liking, using the Picnik tools across the top of the "Edit" field to adjust any red eye, rotate the image or change the sharpness, contrast or colors. Experiment with the tools until your image looks exactly as you want it to look; if you make a mistake, click "Undo" in the upper-right corner to undo your last action.
  
  
• 9). Resize your image. Click "Resize" and type the dimensions you'd like your avatar to be. LiveJournal avatars can be up to 100 pixels wide and 100 pixels high. If your image is a perfect square, type "100" in the width field and the height field automatically adjusts to "100" also. If your image is asymmetrically-shaped, ensure neither the height nor the width dimension exceed 100 pixels. Click "OK" when you're done.
  
  
• 10
  
  Click the "Save & Share" tab across the top.
  
  
• 11
  
  Name your image file and select the image file type from the drop-down menu. LiveJournal avatars can be in .GIF, .JPG and .PNG format. Keeping it in the .JPG format ensures you can keep track of the file size, which, for LiveJournal, must not exceed 40 KB.
  
  
• 12
  
  Slide the .JPG compression quality bar to the right, until you get to the best quality you can get without exceeding LiveJournal's 40 KB limit. Most .JPGs won't exceed this limit even at the best compression quality, which improves the visual quality of your image, so experiment with sliding the compression quality bar to 10, the maximum compression quality.
  
  
• 13
  
  Click "Save Photo" and follow the simple onscreen instructions for saving the image to your hard drive.
  
  

Uploading Your Avatar to LiveJournal

• 1). Log into your LiveJournal account and hover your mouse over the "Profile" tab in the horizontal menu across the top.
  
  
• 2). Click "Manage Userpics" from the drop-down menu that appears.
  
  
• 3). Locate your avatar on your hard drive and double-click it to select it.
  
  
• 4). Edit any keywords or comments you'd like to add to your image on your LiveJournal account. Check the box next to "Make This Your Default Userpic" to make it your primary avatar that shows next to all your comments and posts on the site by default. Leave it unchecked if you don't want it as your default.
  
  
• 5). Click "Proceed" to finish uploading your new avatar to your LiveJournal account.