Here’s my quasi-quick attempt to turn this one into an avatar. I even added a bit of color due to @GreenWyvern’s suggestsion.
Note that it’s designed for the 45x45 resolution, so it looks like this in actual practice:
Also, I outlined it, so it should work on darker themes as well.
@wolfpup , @GreenWyvern , @penultima_thule and @BigT : Thank you all bigly for your advice and your active efforts and assistance in finding, suggesting, and editing all your sample avatars. I’ve now set BigT’s improved lantern pic as my avatar. I think it conveys most nearly (substantially exactly) the image I had in mind. (Big-T, in describing your work as “quasi-quick”, did you mean to imply that you have further improvement in mind?) Again, thank y’all for your help.
Can y’all see the theme that I’m looking for here? Yes, obviously a lantern. But not just any lantern. What is the image I’m aiming for?
ETA: I’m using a white-background theme. But the banner bar at the top of the page is dark blue, so I see the avatar there too with the dark background, and the “outline” that BigT mentions is obvious. Beautiful!
Diogenes?
Gee, how could you ever tell? 
So I was specifically looking for a very antique looking oil-burning or candle-powered hand-held lamp, but not an “Oriental” Aladdin-style one.
(Fun fact: I signed up here just a few days or so after the late lamented Diogenes the Cynic got banned. Somebody at the time questioned if I might be his sock.)
Good job, @BigT. The modifications you made were exactly what was needed for a clear simple image in the 45x45 px format. The added color is a nice touch.
Yes it is. And if you look back at the original image (Post #11) you’ll note that it has a lot of background noise, like a photocopy-of-a-photocopy-of-a-photocopy, which BigT has also removed.
It was more that I was unsure of how good it was. I did it kinda quickly, improvising as I went.
If you guys like it, I’m happy.
Is there a way to de-pixelate it a tad?
Curious observation: BigT posted the preview in 120x120 format and 45x45 format back in Post #21 above. The 45x45 looked a bit fuzzy and washed-out I thought. But I uploaded the 120x120 image and that, as displayed as an avatar by Discourse, is noticeably sharper and clearer and with better contrast. Go figure. (Compare the image shown in Post 21 above with the avatar shown in the vary next post.)
@BigT, how did you put the white outlines around the black lines? Is there a specific function in your image app to do things like that? Or did you have to hand-edit that in, pixel-by-pixel?
Good work, @BigT. I’m impressed.
Really nice avatar!
Hey, I like my avatar in this chat site, but I have one on another chat site that’s too busy. Anyone have advice on cheap (free) software to edit it?
Also, how are y’all embedding images in the page? I assume you are hosting them somewhere else? (Damn, I wish this board allowed images.)
Yes, host them somewhere else as we’ve always done. Then put a link to that in your post. The link has to be on a line by itself.
ETA: Apparently, there’s also a way to upload a pic to the Discourse site and embed that in your post, but WE’RE FORBIDDEN TO DO THAT. Warnings are being given for posters who do that repeatedly.
Not completely automatic, but I didn’t do it by hand, either.
I had already removed all the specks, used the edge detection algorithm to make all of the lines thicker, cleaned up the color fringing, and then removed the white background entirely using GIMP’s Color to Alpha feature. I’d also already scaled it down, as I hadn’t thought about needing to outline it.
To actually add the outline, I used GIMP’s channels dialog to select everything that wasn’t transparent (right click on Alpha Channel and clicking “Channel to Selection”). From there I chose the Selection > Border and changed the selection to a 2px border around the original. I put that on a new layer below the image, and filled it in with white. I also colored in the lantern portion in yellow, instead of the white I had originally used.
I then noticed that the black lines weren’t actually thick enough. For that, I did go ahead and fix them by hand, using a 3px unfeathered brush. Though I did use the shift key to keep the lines straight.
There likely are programs out there that would add the white outline automatically (as it’s a common thing in icons so they work on any background, and specifically recommended my Microsoft), but I was already using GIMP anyways, so I didn’t see the point in looking for one.
Yeah, I don’t want to develop a relationship with some hosting site just because I’d like to post a photo here maybe 6 times a year. Sigh. I post on several other bulletin boards, two of which are running discourse, plus various group chats (Google Hangouts, Discord, Signal, Slack, Teams) and I even participate in a few old-fashioned mailing lists. And every other place I post let’s me upload (small) photos. I know tptb here don’t like that. But it makes me sad.
Most Discourse sites are set up to let you upload photos directly, very obviously. That functionality was turned off here. The only reason we can show images here is that Discourse doesn’t support completely forbidding that.
It does cost something to host images. The most image-heavy of my chat-sites pays more annually for the images than for all the other tech combined. So posters who are intentionally evading the rules and hosting stuff here are probably costing the owners actual $$.
BTW, there’s an entire thread on this subject. Includes an a mod note admonishing to not do it (see Post #13). It seems some users have figured out how to do it anyway (see Post #11), and at least one has been doing it repeatedly and getting mod notes and warnings for it.
You don’t even need an account to upload an image to ImgBB or Imgur. Just go there, upload the image and post the link.
Can you upload photos to any of these sites without actually having it appear in any post on the site? You could do that and then post a link to it here, maybe. But GreenWyvern’s suggestion, just above, sounds better anyway.
I use a lot of tech. There’s overhead with every tool. I used imgur once to post a photo here. Took me several minutes to figure it out. It will take me that long the next time. Unless it’s something I’d want to do regularly, it’s just not worth the hassle. And i wouldn’t use it for anything other than the straight dope. And i wouldn’t use it here often enough to be worth it.
Instead, I’ll probably bitch about it here two or three times a year. And when i get a chance I’ll put the one photo I want to share in Dropbox or Google drive (both of which I use regularly) and it won’t show in line, but anyone who cares will be able to follow the link.
But yeah, I’ll be annoyed those six times a year i might have posted a photo. 
In that case, how about the alternate idea I suggested just above?