Graphics
WhyYouWantThem
Well this is easy, you want your horse to have a personal picture because it improves the quality of the horse. A good picture can help a horse sell, and increase its value. Note you should NEVER NEVER EVER STEAL (USE) A PERSONAL PICTURE MADE FOR SOMEONES ELSES HORSE! THIS IS A GOLDEN RULE THAT SHOULD NEVER BE BROKEN (hence the capital letters!)
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WhatToHaveOn
The basics as to what you want on your horses picture are:

• Name
• Horses Number (so that no one else can steal it!)
• Breed
• Gender
• Image of a horse that is of the actual breed!

From those basics you can have whatever you want. If you can make them yourself just get creative, if not let a personaliser make it for you (see below)
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WhatNotToHaveOn
Now there are a few important things to try and not have on a horses picture which are as follows:

• A picture of a horse which is not of the same breed as your horse. Eg a pic of a shire for an arab horse!
• Dodgey cutting out. If you are going to cut out the horse so it can be put on to a different background make sure you can do it well. Many people can't cut out exactly and it results in a pic looking very poor in quality.
• If you are planning to sell the horse DO NOT put YOUR name on the pic as obviously as soon as it is sold it is wrong and there fore will need to be replaced.
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BasicsOfMakingYourOwn
Well Its very hard for me to give a tutorial as it depends entirely on what programme you use. therefore I will just give forth the following tips and pointers:

• When choosing a background, if appropriate try and match it to the horses name eg if horse called 'show me the money' perhaps include some currency in the background!
• Make sure all pictures you use are of good quality, they should never be blurry.
• The pictures you wat to use may well be covered by copyright. You should check the website you obtain the pictures from (if not your own) for any statements regarding copyright. It is most likely you will need to ask permission from the site to use them, even though its for non profit purposes.

When you have created a picture you must save it as a JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, PDD or PDB file. this means when you save it you must save it so that at the end of the file one of the previously mentioned extensions is shown so therefore when saving you must choose the correct format. (see image )
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BuyingYourOwn
When buying shop around for a maker of pictures. Make sure you can see example as to the quality you are getting. make sure the pictures have the players number on as well as often you will find dishonest players will pretend another player's work is their own.

Ask to see an example before you buy so that your happy with what you are paying for.

Price wise for a basic text being put on top of a plain image of a horse you should expect to pay roughly $100-$1k if you are wanting something complicated as in fading, quality cutting out of horses be prepared to pay big bucks. I personally charged $10mil and I was never short of customers (note I DO NOT make per pics at this time!) but I know several others who will charge the same for very similar work to my own. see my graphic site for my examples (please note all my images are copyrighted and so use of any without my permission is illegal under international copyright law). So basically don't expect to get a super duper fantastic pic for $1,000 this will buy you only the most basic picture if anything at all.

If you do buy a personal picture you should be aware of the normal process of paying/handing over the image. It is common for the maker to make the image then put the word 'sample' in very large letters over the top of the image so you can see what it will look like completed but you can't use it as it is. They will normally put this image on a money horse which they will put up for sale for you to bid on. Once you have bid/bought the horse they should provide the link to the proper image. This will either be on another money horse or hosted on an image hosting website (eg photobucket.com)
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HowToUpload
Next you need to upload your picture to do this firstly click the button on the horses page as shown in the image to the left. If there isn't a link here it may say 'you cannot change a horses picture whilst it is for sale' this will be because the horse is up for sale! The reason for this is to stop people removing pics whilst a horse is for sale when the pic obviously contributes to the value of the horse!

Next step is to choose whether you are using one of HLs pics or one of your own from your computer. If you see the image below left you can see how to choose the option of either uploading your own or using one of HLs preprovided pictures.

Next you have to actually have to upload the pic. firstly click the 'Browse' button as shown below.

Next you need to choose the image you wish to upload. You will need to search your computer for the correct one. You need to remember where on your computer you saved it. Normally you would have saved it in 'my documents' or 'my pictures' go there and select the file you want then do as instructed in the image to the right. You can see there are 3 main steps. In this case note that box at the top that says 'look in' is the folder in which your image is saved. You will note here that I have saved my images in a folder called 'horseland'. After you have followed the three steps as outlined to the right the choose file box will disappear and the white box next to the browse button will be full of text on the lines of 'C:/My Documents/horseland/image.jpg' leave this as it is then click the 'UPLOAD' button. You need to then wait as the pic is uploaded then one of two possibles will happen. If the file was of the correct type and size (under 100k in size) then a screen will appear saying 'your image was succesfully uploaded click here to return to your horse' the alternative will say that your image didn't upload properly and why whether that be it was too big or the wrong file type. you will be given the option to try again though you will need to fix the error first (if the file was too big you will need to reduce its size before trying again etc). Once you have uploaded your picture successfully if you return to your horse you will see the new image in place.
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