Making your own AIM Dolls/Buddy Icons is a lot easier than most people think. First you need to have a some photo editing software installed on your PC such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks or Paint Shop Pro.
Find an image you want to use to base your doll or buddy icon on. You may find using http://images.google.com helps if you don't already have one.
Alternatively
you can create your own in your photo editing software. Please note if you want to submit your doll or buddy icon to us you must have copywrite to the original image.
The next step is to open the image and to change the image mode. You can do this in most applications by going to the image menu then mode and select RGB. This will ensure that the quality of the image is preserved.
You now need to identify which part of the image you which to
appear
in your icon. Look on the tools panel for something called 'Crop' and select it. Then mark out the area you want making sure that its square (otherwise your image may look distorted and mis-shapen).
After you've cropped the image you then need to resize it. You can often do this by looking for 'Resize image' in the menu bar. With the new AIM you need to ensure your images are 48x48 (previously it was 50x50) pixels.
To save your doll you need to make sure its in either a .gif, .jpeg, .bmp format, and we
recommend
that you keep the filesize to under 10k if possible.
Finally to load your new icon into AIM then click on 'My AIM' then goto the 'Edit Options', then 'Edit Preferences'. Click the 'Buddy Icons' tab where you will be able to browse to find the file you've just created.
Be sure to send us your dolls and buddy icons so we can share them with the world! If you have any more suggestions or
tutorials
you wish to share, please get in touch and we'll add your tips here!
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