ok... i am not a high tech girl (high maintenance, maybe), so I was wondering how I would go about using one of my pictures from the waterloo show as my avatar????? all of my pictures are "too big"...again, i do not know the technical term. please help me ops:

TLGP, there's countless ways to do it, but I'm assuming for the moment you don't have access to some of the very cool photo editting tools.

If you do have access to say, PhotoShop, its a whole lot easier, but here's an approach that will work using MS-Word and MS-Paint.

1. Open up MS-Word and create a new blank document
2. On the menu bar at the top, go to [b:19922d0d36][i:19922d0d36]Insert>Picture>From File[/i:19922d0d36][/b:19922d0d36]
3. Once you got the full-size picture viewable in Word, move your cursor over the picture and right-click your mouse.
4. From the little mini-menu, choose "Format Picture", and go to the "Size" tab
5. You can now reduce or enlarge the picture via Scale or actual Size to whatever you want.
6. Once you've got the picture visible in Word in its "shrunk" size, do a PRINT SCREEN", which on most keyboards requires the <SHIFT><PrtSc> to be hit together.
7. Open up Paint, on the menu bar click [b:19922d0d36][i:19922d0d36]Edit>Paste[/i:19922d0d36][/b:19922d0d36], and you should have a copy of your entire screen in Paint, including the sarah pic.
8. Click the little "square" cutting tool and then drag your cursor around the picture itself.
9. Once you've got the pic selected, do a right click on your mouse and choose "cut"
10. Now click [b:19922d0d36][i:19922d0d36]File>New[/i:19922d0d36][/b:19922d0d36], and don't save the old stuff if it prompts you to.
11. Now you've got a "fresh" file, but before you "paste" in your re-sized pic, on the menu bar, go to Image>Attributes and make sure for "units", Pixels are chosen and that the pixel size is less than 80x80.
12. Now "paste" your picture in, there should be no white space around it and then save it, but make sure you "Save as type" JPEG.

I assume you have a place to host the pic? If not, PhotoBucket.com is good, there's an old thread that discusses how to use it here;

http://sarahslean.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=276

Good luck, email or IM me if you need help.

...jim

oh jim you are so sweet! i have not tried it yet and i am too tired to even try to read and understand each step but i promise that i will. i cannot thank you enough for taking the time to leave detailed instuctions for me. you seem like a wonderful man

LGP, you're quite welcome.

An alternative, and probably much easier approach is to simply send me the pic via email and i'll shrink it down for you.

lmk,

...jim