How do I change a larger picture so it can be used as a display picture

I thought I knew how to do this, but it is not working. I took a regular
sized digital photo and resized it down to smaller than 96 X 96 pixels
Irfanview, but then when I select it in Messenger, it only shows part of the
picture. In fact, when I resize it to any size below 96 X 96 it shows the
same part of the original image, so I am doing something wrong.

How do I get the picture to be the proper size to use as a display picture.

Thanks,

 

Greetings Mike,

Are you sure it's 96x96 when you're opening it? It won't resize something that's 96x96 --
are you sure 'Irfanview' isn't cutting it off?

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If I load the picture in Irfanview, and click on Image/Information, it shows
the size as 60 X 96 with 24bit color. In Irfanview, I see the whole face,
but when I load it into Messenger, it cuts off the top and bottom of it, but
the width is OK. Weird thing is, I also created a version that is 52 X 84
and when I load that, it cuts it off at exactly the same places. I would
have thought that it would be cutoff at different spots due to the
difference in size. I have also tired converting the jpg to a gif. Should I
try png?

Thanks,
--
Mike

 

The display picture should be 96 x 96. With 60 x 96 I am afraid it scales
the 60 to 96 and hence you loose a bit. If your display picture stays
weird, remember to delete it first, and make sure you select the right one
to add.

jpg is for photo's
png or gif for graphics.

gif is limited to 256 colours.
png can handle 16+ milion colours, so can be used for photo's too, but jpg
has probably better compression since it attempts to throw away details
humans don't "see".