Persona Image Creation Instructions

• The most important thing to do is try to match up the lighting so that it's consistent between all of the images, paying careful attention to the effects of the ambient light level on the appearance of the subject's skin. (Depending on the lighting, the skin color can take on an undesirable yellowish or pinkish tint.)
• Equally important is to have the camera the proper distance from the subject. Stand fairly close so that you get a good quality picture. Careful positioning of the camera will mean you will need to do less editing later to make your photos look the same size as all of the previous ones.

The final product will only include the subject's head and shoulders, with the eyes located just slightly above the center of the total image. Do whatever editing is necessary (Adobe Photoshop is recommended), comparing with the other persona iamges to get the alignment correct. Export the file as a gif, with pixel dimensions 170x150. Be sure to remove the background, leaving it transparent.

If necessary, the lighting can also be adjusted. This is also fairly easy to do in Photoshop (Filter->Render->Lighting Effects).

Lastly, the bottom portion of the persona image should have a fading effect added. To add this (using Macromedia Fireworks):

• Load persona image into Macromedia Fireworks.
• Load fade-template.png into Fireworks.
• Select the entire image of the fade template (including transparent area)
• Select Copy
• Paste the fade effect into the persona image.
• Adjust the layers, if needed to make sure that the fade covers the image.
• Select Modify->Merge Down
• Using the Magic Wand tool with a tolerance of 1, select the most-white area of the fade.
• Delete the selected area.
• Export your work to a .gif file, and it's ready to be imported into the persona library!

Documented by: dasc 10/02
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