Facebook profile: How to make your photo beautiful!

Have  you  been Facebook profile photo munged?

 

There is nothing more disappointing, when uploading a photo  to Facebook, than to have it munged.   What’s a munge?  That’s a technical term for any  time a  piece of  digital media becomes distorted,  pixelated, blurred, or otherwise fucked up.

Recently I sent  one of my prize winners,  author Karin  Rochelle, their one-of-a-kind piece of art, only  to  see it on her profile in a sad pixelated state.  Now, you  must understand, I make massive images.  There  is no reason for it to ever look pixelated.  So  I asked how she uploaded it  and walked her  through fixing the  problem.  In the middle of  that, it  occurred  to  me that maybe  all  the pixelated  and  blurry images,  which  I  had  seen  posted on Facebook over the  years, were not actually low quality  when  people uploaded them.  It also occurred  to me that  maybe other  people could  use a few simple tips for making  their  Facebook  images  show up nice.

 

 

banana-513795Bigger is better,  right?

Uhhh… No.  Not in  the bedroom  and especially  not in the  Facebook  boudoir.  If  your image is too  large, Facebook  is going  to try to crush  it down to  size.  Talk about a cold shower.  It’s better if you do this, rather than trust Facebook’s automated system. There are  a multitude  of programs  on the internet for  doing this and I’m not going  to  go into the pros  and  cons.  I use Photoshop. It’s expensive.  Try gimp  if you  need something free.  You want  a  ‘web ready’ image.  Photographers, and people doing  print, use 300 dpi.  The  internet  runs on 72 dpi.   Make  sure  your new image is saved with that dpi, not 300 dpi.  If  you  upload  a 300 dpi  image to  Facebook, the system will change  it.

 

Important!

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  • Do not  overwrite  your  old image.
  • Save it under a new name. 
  • There is no way  to  get  that lovely 300 dpi image  back  once its  gone.
  • You can  reduce  down, but  not  up.

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Cock cage? Really?

The second aspect of size is, quite frankly,  size.  And here  is where a  cock  cage  for your image would come in  really  handy.  Get that image in control, man, or  Facebook  will do  it for you, and it’s going to hurt like hell!  This Facebook page will tell you  that the image you load up for a Facebook profile should be 180 X 180 pixels.  Great! So upload  your 180 x  180 image and watch  it turn to  pixels.  ::sigh::  Yes, I’ve had  that experience.  It will  always  look  fine  in the  tiny  profile  pic, and the thumbnail at that  size.  But it  will  show up  pixelated on the news feed, your  timeline, and when people click  on  it.

banana-box-59565So here’s  the  trick.   Upload a bigger  image.  Yes I know, cock cage and all that.  But  the thing about a cock cage  is that  it does  allow some  growth, just not  too much, and that’s what we  want  here.  Not  too  big,  not too  small,  just  right…  This is starting to sound like some kind of warped Goldilocks’  story.  Create an image that is  720 on its longest  side.  Facebook will not  compress that  size or lower,  hence avoiding  all weirdness, blurring, and  pixelating  messes.

Before you  start  stretching  your  120 x 120 tiny graphics,  stop!  That  will put us  back  into the munge  category.  Instead create a solid background that is at least 180  and  at  most  720 and place your tiny image in  the center  of this.  Yay!

Now save it.  As a png.  I have  tried both jpg and  png and the png stays crisper on  Facebook.  So now I save  almost all  my images for Facebook  as  a  png. I also  try  to only  use pngs  for featured images on  my website.  That way when I share stuff it looks great.

woman-789146_1280Time  to Upload!

If  you  have made  it  this  far, you should have a  72  dpi  image that is larger than  180 x 180 pixels and smaller  than  720 on its longest  side.  Let’s  get  that baby  loaded onto Facebook.  Choose  change profile,  upload, find  the image, and we come to  the crop image  page.  Don’t  do it!  Resist!  This option  is for the person  who is uploading a 2000 pixel  image.  It’s too late  for  them. The munge monster  has already taken a painful  bite  out of their ass.  But you  have  done your homework  and your photo  is ‘just right’ so  you do not need this option.  This  is just the munge monster’s last-ditch effort to get your image.  At  the bottom  right corner is  an option  to skip cropping.  Click it.  Ahhh…  I  feel better  already , knowing you have  made  this  choice.

Once  you  have  skipped the  cropping you  will land in  a  confusing choice which looks nearly identical to  the last one.  This one you  want to use.  Choose the  area  that you want  to  show  up in your profile thumbnail, and you’re done. Bravo!

cheers-839865_1280Congratulations!

You’re done.  I  can  not  even begin to  express  how relieved we both feel.  You thwarted  the  munge  monster from  eating  your profile  images once and for all.  Somewhere there  is an angry  little  creature gnawing on its foot,  I”m sure.

The Recap

  1. Find a program for resizing your image.
  2. Do not overwrite the original image.  Save under  a  new  name.
  3. Make it web ready – 72 dpi
  4. Make it the right size – larger than  180 x 180 pixels and smaller  than  720 on its longest  side
  5. Do not  use the  Facebook crop  tool.

Like the info?  Drop  me  a  link  to your profile  image.  I’d love  to see  your munge monster massacring pics.

 

 

 

 

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