What is XFacer?

XFacer is a simple application for cropping pictures and reducing them to 48-by-48-pixel black-and-white icons.

James Ashton explains it best on his web site: (https://web.archive.org/web/20110706113756/http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~jaa/)

X-Face is a file format used to allow a small image to be included with mail items. Typically the image shows the sender's face and is included in the mail headers labelled X-Face: . ... I devised the format to contain 48x48x1 (i.e. black and white) images in the minimum possible space. With care in production, dithered images of faces are surprisingly recognisable given their small size...

How to do it:

1. Load an image from a file or a URL.
2. Move the selection rectangle over the part you want to be in the icon.
3. Adjust the size and proportion of the rectangle by dragging one of the corners, if you want.
4. A drawer at the bottom of the window offers you a choice of methods for “dithering” (dealing with grays in a black-and-white world).
5. Adjust the brightness and contrast to suit.
6. Select the text of the XFace: header at the bottom of the window. You can copy it for pasting it into mail or news headers, or drag-and-drop it.

Download XFacer for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

Compatibility notes

Historical: https://web.archive.org/web/20110706113756/http://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~jaa/

Emulating this? It could probably run under: QEMU