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added GIMP instructions
1. '''Choose a good picture.''' It should depict a Williams student making a funny face. Cruise around your own computer, [http://wso.williams.edu/PhotoShare PhotoShare] and [http://williams.facebook.com Facebook] to find some good ones. You can save a photo on the Internet to your hard disk by right-clicking and selecting "Save image as..." (or something like that).
2. '''Open the picture in PhotoShop.''' If you don't have PhotoShop installed on your computer, visit the [http://oit.williams.edu/oit/software/index.cfm OIT Software Download] page and scroll down to PhotoShop CS 2 (or whatever version is current). If you have GIMP, see below. Once it's installed, open the program, and go to "File -> Open...", and select the picture.
3. '''Open a new file''' under File -> New. Make sure that it is 134 pixels wide and 81 pixels tall. The rest of the defaults should work fine.
[[Category:How-To]]
====Using GIMP====
Some people don't have PhotoShop not because they're too lazy to download it, but because their computer runs on a free operating system. For them, there's GIMP, and with GIMP, you can make a fully-operational WSO picture, almost.
1. Find your picture as above and open it in GIMP.
2. Select the rectangular selection tool, and in the dropdown menu, select "Fixed aspect ratio" (as opposed to "Free select" or "Fixed size").
3. Set the width to 134 and the height to 81, and select px as the units (not that it matters).
4. Select the person's face using the tool as described above.
5. Select the bucket tool -- the one that pours paint -- and change the color to white (by double-clicking on the upper of the overlapping squares below the tools, and then selecting white when the menu comes up). This is best done zoomed in all the way, until the person is very grainy and pixellated. Click all over the background (not the person's face) to eliminate as much as possible.
6. Select the eraser tool and make it as big as possible. Eliminate large regions of the background with the eraser, and then make it smaller to get the last bits out of small areas in your photo.
7. Double-click on the upper square again and put 363237 where it says ffffff.
8. Use the paint bucket to pour that color in the blank white background.
9. Go to Image -> Scale image and make your image 134 by 81 pixels.
10. Blow up the image until it is very pixellated again. Select the brush tool with a small brush (since the image is very small now) with color 363237 and click along the edges of the person's face so as to eliminate the lightness that comes from the bucket-erasing technique above.
11. Save your image. This is where, to the best of my knowledge, GIMP fails, because GIMP does not, to the best of my knowledge, have a "Save for web" option. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Save it as a jpeg.
12. 16. Now you're ready to upload your creation. Visit http://wso.williams.edu/front/upload and fill out the forms, and cross your fingers.