You can't see it? Stupid Tinypic! (I can see it just fine!) You've obviously got it figured out already, as evidenced by your example below, but in case you're still curious, I hope you can see this:
(And I hope that's the one I fiddled with, and not the original! Kind of hard to tell. I didn't really do much with it.)
The next cap - whoo! That looks really good! ^_^ I can't come up with any way of making it look better - it's already nice and sharp. Sharpening it further would just risk making it piexellated. You can use the little drop-shaped tool to sharpen/blur particular areas of the picture, but... I'd say it looks spiffy! (The bells and whistles come later, if you want them. With a nice, clean base, you can make anything.)
Unsharp mask... See, I use these programs, but I don't actually understand them. XD So. Uh. It's got an interesting way of changing the grain and lines and such, and if you fiddle around with it it can make your picture look both horrible, and also really cool? Um. Yeah, I'm the worst person to ask this ever. (Google provides some answers, at least, though a lot of these photo editing sites can get really technical.)
The best thing about slightly more complicated image editing software, like the Gimp, is the layers. I don't know if the Fast Stone had it, or if you're using it, but - do! Even if it's just for comparison's sake - when you're working with such a tiny pic, it's hardly any effort at all for the program to keep a million layers open. I tend to duplicate my layer before every change, and sometimes try different things with identical duplicates. (The layers are off to the right in my Gimp, and the "duplicate" button is the one with two images over each other. If you click the eye symbol to the side, it can render the layers invisible...)
Layers are fun for many, many things, including being able to add textures, or fiddling with parts of the image but not others, or just getting really neat effects - try opening a new image, duplicating the background layer, and then switching the top layer from "Normal" (way at the top) to "Mask", for a really useful kind of effect! (You can change the opacity of the top image to make it less drastic, and save the result as one layer by right-clicking and choosing to "merge down".)
Okay - now I'm just babbling. I really have no idea what you're interested in trying, but - yeah. Layers = good, and fiddling around is the best way to learn. ♥ Oh! And I should mention that my Gimp is in Swedish - annoying, but that's what happened when I downloaded it. So I'm really just guessing at what the commands and such are called in your Gimp, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's much more likely that I'm just way off on my guess than that you're looking in the wrong place or anything.
no subject
(And I hope that's the one I fiddled with, and not the original! Kind of hard to tell. I didn't really do much with it.)
The next cap - whoo! That looks really good! ^_^ I can't come up with any way of making it look better - it's already nice and sharp. Sharpening it further would just risk making it piexellated. You can use the little drop-shaped tool to sharpen/blur particular areas of the picture, but... I'd say it looks spiffy! (The bells and whistles come later, if you want them. With a nice, clean base, you can make anything.)
Unsharp mask... See, I use these programs, but I don't actually understand them. XD So. Uh. It's got an interesting way of changing the grain and lines and such, and if you fiddle around with it it can make your picture look both horrible, and also really cool? Um. Yeah, I'm the worst person to ask this ever. (Google provides some answers, at least, though a lot of these photo editing sites can get really technical.)
The best thing about slightly more complicated image editing software, like the Gimp, is the layers. I don't know if the Fast Stone had it, or if you're using it, but - do! Even if it's just for comparison's sake - when you're working with such a tiny pic, it's hardly any effort at all for the program to keep a million layers open. I tend to duplicate my layer before every change, and sometimes try different things with identical duplicates. (The layers are off to the right in my Gimp, and the "duplicate" button is the one with two images over each other. If you click the eye symbol to the side, it can render the layers invisible...)
Layers are fun for many, many things, including being able to add textures, or fiddling with parts of the image but not others, or just getting really neat effects - try opening a new image, duplicating the background layer, and then switching the top layer from "Normal" (way at the top) to "Mask", for a really useful kind of effect! (You can change the opacity of the top image to make it less drastic, and save the result as one layer by right-clicking and choosing to "merge down".)
Okay - now I'm just babbling. I really have no idea what you're interested in trying, but - yeah. Layers = good, and fiddling around is the best way to learn. ♥ Oh! And I should mention that my Gimp is in Swedish - annoying, but that's what happened when I downloaded it. So I'm really just guessing at what the commands and such are called in your Gimp, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's much more likely that I'm just way off on my guess than that you're looking in the wrong place or anything.