How to convert normal pictures into portraits

Does anyone know, I mean I know what size I want to resize it to, but I don't know the best way to convert it to a 256 bitmap. In case anyone needs to see the pic I'm using to tell me how to do it here it is

Well, first cut near the shoulders, it would be interesting cut and leaving the severed head to add it in the form of layer, resize the portrait to the desired size, now you can cut and remove the background adding a background like pink for example RGB 255,0,255, now it's time to redraw the lines that lost focus to resize, adjust color and brightness, it would be interesting to work with layers, if something does not look good only delete the layer, convert to 256 colors and edit the reed putting the first frame as RGB 255,0,255 and put the black in her place RGB 0,0,0, then save the color palette, close the edited image terminated without saving the color palette there, open the image again and is just go on adding color palette and choose the palette you created the image, now you will be able to set the background color as invisible

felideo wrote:

Well, first cut near the shoulders, it would be interesting cut and leaving the severed head to add it in the form of layer, resize the portrait to the desired size, now you can cut and remove the background adding a background like pink for example RGB 255,0,255, now it's time to redraw the lines that lost focus to resize, adjust color and brightness, it would be interesting to work with layers, if something does not look good only delete the layer, convert to 256 colors and edit the reed putting the first frame as RGB 255,0,255 and put the black in her place RGB 0,0,0, then save the color palette, close the edited image terminated without saving the color palette there, open the image again and is just go on adding color palette and choose the palette you created the image, now you will be able to set the background color as invisible

What program should I be using

Sorry for the double post but I figured out the resizing and image conversion now when I'm in FF3 and it asks me about the images palette which one do I pick

This should be good enough

Nice finished portrait!

Shadow Lord wrote:

felideo wrote:

Well, first cut near the shoulders, it would be interesting cut and leaving the severed head to add it in the form of layer, resize the portrait to the desired size, now you can cut and remove the background adding a background like pink for example RGB 255,0,255, now it's time to redraw the lines that lost focus to resize, adjust color and brightness, it would be interesting to work with layers, if something does not look good only delete the layer, convert to 256 colors and edit the reed putting the first frame as RGB 255,0,255 and put the black in her place RGB 0,0,0, then save the color palette, close the edited image terminated without saving the color palette there, open the image again and is just go on adding color palette and choose the palette you created the image, now you will be able to set the background color as invisible

What program should I be using

Corel PaintShop Pro X7

felideo wrote:

Shadow Lord wrote:

felideo wrote:

text

What program should I be using

Corel PaintShop Pro X7

I have been using the good old Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.04 for many years!   I trust it very much!

I use gimp a lot its free and gets the job done and u can do layers so u can do a lot with it