Compressing images for avatars

[Jamasaurus]

I've been trying for the last couple of days to compress some JPEGs for my avatar here on TB. The rules are 100 x 100 pixels or 10.0 kb. I want to know how we are supposed to get normal jpeg images that small without god-awfully pixelated results.

I see new member's avatars all the time with pretty decent quality images, so I just want to know the process for compressing these files. I've been using gimp and scaling the images down, but even when the largest dimension is 100 pixels the file is too large, or far too grainy.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[FL Knifemaker]

I use photoshop. I just reduce them down to the required size, then I usually use the sharpen function to clear them up. My knife and gun forum allows 160 X 160, that makes it MUCH easier, the TB size is rather small