Get your avatar to change color like the rest of the site

As you might have noticed, we are very interested in making linkli.st as simple as we possibly can. This goes further than just the structure and functionality of the site; the color coding is a result of this thinking too, with the site being as blue as possible in View mode and as red as possible in Edit mode. With such heavy color coding, the avatar of a user might stand out a bit. If you are bothered by this, we just bumped a super simple little fix that actually makes it possible to get to your avatar to change color too; blue when the rest of the site is blue, and red when the rest of the site is red*. All you need is 5 minutes and Photoshop.

* Please note; this only works for your own avatar, so as long as every user on linkli.st doesn’t update his or her avatar, there will still be some avatars using other colors…

1. Open your avatar image in Photoshop

2. Copy the entire image to your clipboard (Select → all, Edit → Copy)

3. Create a new layer (Layer → Create New Layer)

4. In the new layer, press the character Q and paste the image from your clipboard (Edit → Paste), and then press Q again

5. Fill the selection white (Edit → Fill → Use: White)

6. Deselect (Select → Deselect), and throw away the bottom layer

7. Save as PNG-24 (File → Save for Web and Devices) and upload the image to linkli.st!

Happy 2010 everyone!