Still trying to find best way to reduce large JPEG files to ‘avatar’ specs…
If you figure it out, tell me, okay? Cool avatar, regardless.
Some suggestion: Change to GIF format with a good graphics editor. Then reduce the colors to 256 or 64. Paint Shop Pro lets you audit the picture and find how many colors are represented. The GIF format lets you choose the colors that are actually found in you picture as opposed to the full spectrum of millions that are required in the JPEG format. It can signficantly reduce the size of the graphic without impacting the resolution.
Also select a graphic that lends itself to simplicity and experiment with artistic filters like posterizing and varying the contrasts. This and cropping the graphic to it essential size can help.
Hope this helps with your avatar so you can get back to posting more about how you …
Hi Tom
Nice avatar, I took a similar shot with what looks like the same flower … spooky!
If you have Photoshop it’s actually easy to reduce the size. You click the “Image” part on the tool bar and when the window pops up, you go to "Image Size. I then just make sure that the LARGEST pixel size is 100 (you can change it if it’s not). Then the avatar is good to use. That may be rather simplistic, and there might be better ways to do it, but it’s always worked for me. 
That’s what I do. Then you can go to the “File” pulldown menu and click on “Save for web.” It will show what the size-reduced file will look like, show the file size and give you the choice of JPEG or GIF. You can try back and forth between JPEG and GIF to see which is a smaller file and which looks better.
Best wishes,
Jerry