Hello, all!

One of the things I see struggled most with art, is compression. A lot of quality loss, and lots of people come to me with questions. Instead of answering PM after PM (don't worry, I still love you guys!), I've chosen to make a guide that anybody can be referred to by anyone else.

So lets get down to it.

Step 1: Do not save as PNG!

No, seriously, do not. The short answer is, all of your art cuts can be saved as a max size JPG file, easy peasy, problem solved, no other questions or problems.

The long answer is, you can technically save everything EXCEPT the horse avatar as a PNG.

Horse avatars almost ALWAYS must be saved as JPGs, or JPEGs! As a whole, the files are smaller, and do not receive much, if any, quality loss. Most importantly: they do not blur like so many artists become frustrated with.

Never, ever use a website to cut your work. Always upload it to a 500x500 canvas in your art program, and THEN save it as a JPG/JPEG horse avatar.

Step 2: Compression

You've saved your horse avatar as a JPG/JPEG? Good.

This should be the only thing you have to compress, but if something else comes up as too big a file size (which I've never seen, but you never know!), these same steps can be followed.

Below is the before and after of a horse avatar I recently made for a player, and compressed:

Can't tell the difference? Good.

The top one is the uncompressed one. I told it to go as high as it could after cutting it into a horse avatar. I saved it as a JPG, it ended up at 290KB. The second one is the compressed one, still JPG, at 83.4KB.

( I will hunt you down if you steal it, so don't :D )

Compress Where? Versa?

I go here (link).

Cut your art into a horse avatar BEFORE uploading it there.

Drag your horse avatar cut into the upload, the website I linked above. It will take you to a new page. Wait for it to finish.

Do NOT choose the quality option!

Select "max file size" above it (notice: it ONLY works for JPGs), and tell it to compress it to 95KB.

Let it load. Download the image. Done.

Your page should look something like this: