AOL Instant Messenger can use many different
kinds of picture formats, however I would recommend
that you stick with the basic filetypes - BMP,
GIF and JPG. There are two main buddy icon restrictions
you need to keep in mind. Firstly, the picture
file must be no larger than 7k (7168 bytes). Secondly,
the picture will be resized by the AOL Instant
Messenger software to 48x48 pixels, regardless
of the size of the original. This can result in
unexpected results... So, it is best to control
the final appearance of your of your personal
buddy icon by scaling and cropping your picture
before adding it to AIM to become your buddy icon.
Step One
Select the picture image you want to make into
your personal buddy icon. As your image will
be very small when transformed into your buddy
icon it is best to use an image which is sharply
focused with good image contrast. You could
experiment with adjusting the image to increase
the contrast and sharpening in you image editing
software, like Microsoft Paint, Adobe Photoshop
Elements or Paint Shop Pro.
Step Two
Select and crop the area of the picture you
want to make into your buddy icon. Buddy icons
are square so make your selection square. Then
scale your image to 48x48 pixels. If the original
picture is very large I find that I achieve
a better finished icon if I reduce the picture
size in stages, sharpening at each step as the
picture is reduced to the final size of 48x48
pixels. Save your picture with a new file name.
Step Three
You could now load your buddy icon into AIM.
However, AIM will add a blue border around your
buddy icon. This doesn't look very good with
some icons. Avoid this by adding a 1 pixel trasparent
border. To achieve this:
1. Create a new image file 50x50 pixels in
size.
2. Color the image with a color not found
in your icon
3. Copy and paste your icon into the centre
of the new image file.
4. Set the transparency of the image to the
newly created border color.
5. Save the image as a GIF. It must be GIF
format as the transparent effect only works
with GIFs.
