How to Make and Upload your AVATAR to your ATS profile. Step By Step Guide, page 1

How to upload your own Avatar. Step by Step
First you need an AVATAR Image... this should be no larger than 160 by 400 px

you can use this one if you like and modify it in any paint program

Right Click on the above image and choose Save As... to save to your PC, then open your paint program , MS paint (it really sucks for anything other than laying on some bit of text) or download the Free shareware GIMP program. ..and im not making a tutorial on how to use GIMP ! I hope not anyway

GIMP is a rip off of photoshop. so you need to make a new layer over the avatar image template and work on that layer to add your own picture and text, then when ur done, flatten the image, then save it for web as a png.

I use png for abovetopsecret as seems to retain the origial quality of the pic, whereas when i used jpg even set to highest quality in ats it seems to loose a lot of quality. I dont know if the upload engine applies any compression or not? But try to use .png if you can

Now you have your Avatar you will want to upload it so you can be easily identified in the forums and it makes it a lot easier to find your own posts in a long thread

How to upload an AVATAR:

0: login to your ATS account on www.abovetopsecret.com

1: go to the "member tools" button located on the horizontal button bar

2: click "My Pictures" , this takes you to the media portal

3: click "Upload Picture" and use the browse... to locate your avatar on your computer. click to upload.

Next Screen looks like this...

4: it should confirm your pic was uploaded

5: click on your picture of Avatar you can now see in your personal folder

6: it will show you the fullsize one now on the next screen, scrolldown to see the ATS URLs of the image. You want to copy to your clipboard the url for the one it says "use as ATS avatar"
the URL should look something like this : files.abovetopsecret.com...



7: then click the green hyperlinked "ATS AVATAR" link above it

8:this takes you to "Your ATS Account Settings" page




9: you will see some grey data entry boxes, scroll down to find the "Avatar URL:" and click in that box and paste in your avatar url you saved from 6. either right-click and paste.. or when in the box press CTRL V. on ur keyboard which will paste it in.

10: Click the submit button. Thats it Done!
Now you can go back to your forum and see your handy work in your new avatar!


Please make note that there are two different "sites" for your ATS stuff.
one is
www.abovetopsecret.com... /forum/ etc

and the other is the media centre (where u upload stuff like ur avatar and pictures to embed in forum posts or share with members

this "site" (subdomain) url is this:
media.abovetopsecret.com...

So just note that each behave as if they are two different sites -but both linked together.
if your in the media one and want to get back to the forum, either deltet the "media." part from the url in your browser and refresh.
or simpler: click the "AboveTopSecret.com" white link at the top righthand of the page.

View this Tutorial in my Blog in seperate window


[edit on 18-1-2010 by mikeg2222]

reply to post by mikeg2222

---

The image can be 400 pixels tall IF the file size is 50kb or less.

NICE job on the "how to" by the way!

Springer...

reply to post by mikeg2222

---

I did a search on the free GIMP program, and I am tempted to download it. The thing I'm concerned with, is that most of these "free" programs can download other things to your computer - harmful things, like tracking programs, adware, spyware, etc. How do I know if this program is completely safe. It appears to be a good program from what I can tell.

I would be very interested to have some advice/feedback from anyone who is familiar with this program before I download it.

Thanks in advance

[edit on 18-1-2010 by NTSFR3]

Originally posted by NTSFR3
reply to post by mikeg2222

---

I did a search on the free GIMP program, and I am tempted to download it. The thing I'm concerned with, is that most of these "free" programs can download other things to your computer - harmful things, like tracking programs, adware, spyware, etc. How do I know if this program is completely safe. It appears to be a good program from what I can tell.

I would be very interested to have some advice/feedback from anyone who is familiar with this program before I download it.

Thanks in advance

[edit on 18-1-2010 by NTSFR3]

You should have no problems with the GIMP exe itself providing you download from a known location. I just downloaded from Sourceforge and virus scanned it to be clean, and ran the install program.
here is the link for gimp from Sourceforge Download Gimp


Reply to other poster query:
When you hit reply to post and you press preview after you typed out your reply, the avatar does not show up here. But will in the thread when you return to the main body of the thread.

AshleyD has a fabulous tutorial on Avatars:

Avatar & Media FAQ

But you did a great job too!!!

[edit on January 18th 2010 by greeneyedleo]

Originally posted by tk2dsky
I've done all that and when you click on my profile the avatar shows up, but it won't when on my replys...any ideas?

[edit on 18-1-2010 by tk2dsky]

Nil Points !! ) haha oh i see what you done you have inserted an external URL of your image from your photobucket site i2.photobucket.com...

ATS Avatars only work with images you upload to your ATS media account. Else the avatars is open to "abuse" that would detriment the platform. - such as speed to load the threads. With the Avatars held on ATS servers you can be sure of lightning fast load times so it does not take forever to open a long thread

if you like to use this picture in the photobucket, first open that photobucket link above the view the pic, then Right Click on the image and choose Save picture as... or Save As... to save to your pc, then follow the tutorial uploading this image to your ATS folder.

that will fix the issue

[edit on 18-1-2010 by mikeg2222]

reply to post by mikeg2222

---

Thanks for the info and also the step by step on creating and uploading avatars

If you have downloaded the GIMP photo editing freeware program and are looking to customise the 160x400px template, take a look at my ATS blog where I have posted a screen capture of my GIMP program detailing the basic features to use in customising the Avatar Template.

My ATS Blog "Creating and Uploading your Avatar"

I will add a few more screen shots when i next get around to it. But if your having a go and get stuck give me a shout.

Here's an example of an Avatar (I just made ) in GIMP



This is simply my free stock ATS Avatar template , a picture of Guitar Hero Logo ( google images) cut out. a cut out of a guitar ,and i put a bit of a glow around guitar hero logo. Just done quick 5 mins in the pan, lovely!

this looks cool because the black background, and the shiny black guitar. just makes it look like its a really glossy Avatar. -yet its quite simple.

Good job. Clear, easy to understand and with illustrations. I remember I struggled a lot trying to figure out how the avatar and background worked when I first got here. It is actually really confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it you will be fine.

For those of you who find programs like Gimp to be cluttered and hard to use - or if you are just lazy - I highly recommend the following Open Source application. It has a simple interface and it is very easy to use.

Paint .NET

It's not as powerful as Gimp or the Google Sketch program, but it is a massive improvement over the standard "Paint" program.

Originally posted by Dark Ghost

For those of you who find programs like Gimp to be cluttered and hard to use - or if you are just lazy - I highly recommend the following Open Source application. It has a simple interface and it is very easy to use.

Paint .NET

It's not as powerful as Gimp or the Google Sketch program, but it is a massive improvement over the standard "Paint" program.

Hi there Dark Ghost, thanks for the link to paint.net - i have not seen this program before (as i have only used photoshop) I agree GIMP can present a bit of a learning curve at first - like photoshop. Paint.net program is a lot easier to use simpler program - many members may find much more straight forward to use

I have just downloaded paint.net from that location and virus scanned with norton 360 - and confirm free of any bugs. Installed it and customised avatar with it. Direct download for Paint.net program

Edit: I just added a screen shot of using PAINT.NET to my tutorial in my ATS Blog. Also added some instructions on customising the Avatar Template using PAINT.NET with a second picture to overlay on the template. Click the link in my signature.

[edit on 19-1-2010 by mikeg2222]

Edit: Here is a Test Avatar for anyone to use to upload to test it all works
while you find some pictures to customise the template with or make your own from scratch.


To save this to your computer. right click on the image and choose Save as.. or Save picture as... then save to your pc.


[edit on 19-1-2010 by mikeg2222]

reply to post by NTSFR3

---

It is safe to download.

it will not install anything else without asking you in the install bit.

If it ask's you to install a free toolbar. such as Yahoo!, ask.com or any others.
uncheck the box. also uncheck the box wich might say:

"I have read and understand the T&c and agree to install "Yahoo!" toolbar.

any free tool bars/cursers/smileys, are spyware. or adware.

with gimp it wont install them as long as you look what you are agreeing too.

[edit on 27-4-2010 by MR BOB]