fancy avatars

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I noticed that the avatars you can upload from your computer to WP are very limited in the amount of memory they can have. Considering that issue, how are so many people able to get such detailed avatars for their pictures?

I would say size the smaler the less it takes up

"detailed"?

The main consideration you need to understand, is the difference between "JPEG" images and "Graphic" images.

If you wish to have a photographic sort of image for your avatar, you should use the Joint Photographic Experts Group format. In there, if you have something better that Microsoft Paint, you can adjust the "compression" to trade off size, with quality. At one extreme, a large file with (almost) faithful storage of the image. At the other extreme, a "chunky" image. It is a "lossy" format, which save space.

On the other hand, if your image is more of a "poster" type of thing, with mostly larger areas of the identical colour washes, the "GIF" format usually works out smallest.

Just to confound all that, my current avatar is a bit of an exception, mainly because I've "tinkered" with it rather a lot. Although it is really more suitable for being stored as a photographic image, the JPEG format does not permit "transparent" bits. Then, the PNG format will allow them, but that isn't so compact. In the end, I stored it as GIF, where it takes up 9,828 bytes.

In each case above, the actual dimensions (in pixels) of the images is not as significant as you may think.

Use a decent graphics program, not microsoft paint.
Think about your picture.

If it looks photographic, then you'll need to save it as a JPG file. You will need to adjust the compression to get it below the size threshold. Sometimes this causes the picture to not look good. You need to strike the right balance.

If it looks more "artistic", it's probably better to save as a GIF File. Think about the number of colours, GIF supports "paletted" pictures. Have a think about how many colours you think are there, 16, 32, 64 etc.. and try to reduce the palette to an optimised one containing a lower number of colours. The fewer colours, the smaller your file.

If you need help, post a big picture in a thread and ask someone to convert it to an avatar for you.

Most of us have too much free time anyway.