Updated January 8th, 2013 with the latest instructions!
If you’ve ever tried to change your Facebook profile picture before, whether for your personal profile or fan page, you know how frustrating it can be. On top of Facebook’s technical glitches, which leave you wonder if you’re permanently stuck with that question mark of doom, the thumbnail never seems to look right.
On your personal profile thumbnail, you’re either a tiny speck in the distance or you’re showing off your left eyebrow. On your fan page, your brand’s logo is cut off. Here are some fan pages that still haven’t gotten it quite right:
Facebook recommends that profile pictures should be 200px wide. They height can vary up to three times the width. However, they don’t make it clear how the thumbnail that Facebook uses is generated from this picture.
You’ll find that Facebook crops images when generating a thumbnail, losing information around the edge. You can edit the thumbnail to drag it to a different part of your picture, but you cannot expand the thumbnail selection. So when you create your profile image that’s 200px wide, allow a 12 pixel border around crucial information such as a brand name or logo to allow for automatic cropping.
Also remember that Facebook thumbnails are always square, regardless of the shape of your profile image. So when designing rectangular profile pictures, make sure to keep your desired thumbnail imagery within a square boundary. Then you can edit the thumbnail selection accordingly.
Have the profile image specifications changed with the new Facebook Timeline Pages?
No. The rules above still apply. Your profile image will appear as a 125 x 125 pixel box, but if you attempt uploading a picture that small, you will see an error message! So intuitive, right? The dimensions above still apply to Timeline pages.
How to create a profile image with the correct dimensions
Create an image that is 200 x 200. The minimum upload size is 180 x 180, and the profile image will apear as 160 x 160, but I always create the image as a 200 x 200 file so it’s easy to know what border size I have to work with. Next, create a 12 x 12 border around the edge of your image. This will be the area that is cut off by Facebook in your thumbnail image. To make this easy for you, I have created a photoshop template that has a layer for this border.
Click here to download the Photoshop file: Facebook Profile Picture Template.
How to update your fan page profile image
Once you have the image created, go to Edit Page > Update Info in your Admin Panel.
Select Profile Picture in the sidebar.
Click Choose File and find the image on your hard drive.
How to edit your fan page thumbnail
After the photo uploads, click Edit Thumbnail below the picture.
Next, drag the little image until the main part of the profile image is within the thumbnail box. When you’re happy with the way it looks, click Save. That’s it!
Actually it appears that you don’t have the leave the border in your profile picture now – they SEEM to use the whole 200 x 200. But thanks for your help – shame Facebook don;t have something similar!
Hi there!!! I love the excerpt of your book I just came across when attempting to improve the appearance of my FB foto. So much so that I just bought your book. I’m looking forward to reading it and improving my appearance. Thanks in advance, Tony.
Thanks so much Tony! I hope you loved the eBook. How has your Facebook page grown since you bought the book a few months ago? I’d love to hear about your results!
Ns to c this… Really great social network FB..
Thx n regards..
Hi, thanks for the article, i don’t have an issue with sizing but blurring. Why does facebook pages profile image look blurred, particularly reds? It looks terrible, how do i correct for that?
Thanks
Gary
Hi have exactly the same problem and it seems difficult to figure it out, I just leave it blurry after several attempts.
I make profile pictures in corel draw and when I upload them, pictures loose their quality, and it looks like really low quality image. What can you advice for that?
My facebook profile picture shows up choppy, and blurry even though its a big file size 1024 x 1024 any ideas?
Perhaps try uploading a smaller file size. The profile image only appears as 160 x 160, so the larger size could be the problem.
Thanks!
can you please help and tell me why my fan page logo pixalated,,, same as your herein above you can see that pixels appear around you logo text
I’ve heard that it happens mainly when the color red is used. Do you use red in your fan page image?
yes I do
it is my logo background corporate color. Is there away to overcome this issue.. Thanks
I actually switched to using a black background with red text instead of a red background with black text, and my photo looks much better now.
Thanks a million for this, I wasted a bunch of time before I looked this up and found you site, why Facebook doesn’t put this in their help section I don’t know.
Hi, This is a great page with very useful information. I have a question which I hope you can answer for me. I want to upload about 10 photos into my photo album on The Boxing Powerhouse Facebook site however, I do not want to post them on the page yet. How can I put them in the photo album without posting them straight away??? Hope you can help me. Thanks
Andrea
Right now there isn’t a staging area for Facebook photos, so you’ll need to upload them when you’re ready for the world to see. My advice would be to get all of your descriptions written up in a separate word doc so you could just copy-and-paste them in when you’re ready to upload.
Dear Diana, Love your post. I too think chopped up logo’s are terrible. So when I had trouble getting my logo to appear in all its glory, that is from edge to edge, I sought help and found your post. While I followed all the directions, I still couldn’t get the logo to appear without the sides being cut off. I tried moving the logo around in the “drag the image to adjust” feature, but that didn’t work at all. So I tried “scale to fit”. That seemed to work, but when I saw it on the actually facebook page, it too was cut off.
Any advice? After three hours of working on this, I am frustrated and ready to give up FB rather than have a cut-off logo.
I’m having the same problem as Mary Beth—no mattere what I do it cuts off part of my logo—any help would be appreciated!!!
Hi Marybeth and Angela — please check out this post again. You’ll see that I’ve added a template you can use to get the image just write, and I’ve added a section to the instructions to make it really crystal clear how to size your photo. Hope this helps!
Hi diane
I have a Mac but do not have photoshop. Is there free software I can download somewhere to add your border to my thumbnail so facebook stops chopping off part of my logo?!?!
Nice that FB opted for the “guaranteed-grainy” resizing algorithm. Well done.
This tutorial fulfilled exactly what we were looking for–the bleeds on our logo. We adjusted, and it now fits perfectly.
How the heck do I get to ‘my admin panel’ ?
You can expand it at the very top-right of your Facebook page.
Great tip
Hello everyone! I just wanted to let you all know that I have updated this post today (01/7/13) with the latest instructions. This update includes a Photoshop template for your Facebook profile photo so you can make sure you’re using all the right dimensions, and fitting your image within the border that Facebook will cut off. I hope this helps — please let me know if you have any additional questions or feedback.
Thank you for Tutorial!
You’re welcome!
Thanks
Wow! Great info. Do you have a template and info on Facebook Cover Photos?
Hi Matt, I’m glad you found this helpful! I do have a Facebook cover photo template, but right now it’s only available as part of the Stand Out on Facebook ebook.
Tried all the above. Picture still way out and not properly visible.
Amaziing a billion dollar company cant get this right!!
I love ebuk..its awesome..thanq diana. Love yu
This was extremely helpful! Thank you!
Thank you veeeeeery, very, very, very much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Diana. Do you have similar image dimensions for Twitter profile photo and header images? What about the wallpaper for Twitter. Since profile pix show up different sizes, what is the optimum size to upload? Thanks.
Hi Vicki, I don’t right now, but it’s definitely something I want to provide in a post soon! I got a similar request on the U Stand Out Facebook Page this week.
Thank you for this! Regardless of whether i clicked ‘scale to fit’ or not, FB would sometimes choose to scale my logo to fit vertically even though it’s long horizontally, resulting in lobbing off the sides. And with my particular logo, the result was also that it suddenly looked like a boob. So THANK YOU – fixed it!
Hi Diana,
Can you explain the steps I need to take once I’ve downloaded your photoshop template.
I created a logo on Microsoft Word, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to size it to 200×200. When I capture the image its not a perfect square but I bit of a rectangle.
Any good articles or links you could recommend?
Thanks, Pete
@Pete Do you have Photoshop installed on your computer? You could use a free screenshot-capturing software like Jing http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html to take a screenshot of the logo you created in Word. Then you can copy/paste that screenshot right into the Photoshop template. To resize an image in Photoshop, click Edit > Transform > Resize and then drag the corners so that it fits within the template. Hope that helps!
what pixels do I create in 72 or 300
what color do i create in – cmky or rob
My profile picture always comes out blurry, can someone help me and let me know what I am doing wrong..or is it just how facebook works?
https://www.facebook.com/trenton.china
Hi Diana,
Thanks for taking the time to post these instructions and also to provide the .psd…super useful!
We just launched our new business and now it’s time to concentrate on getting our social outlets up to snuff. I had uploaded our profile logo and it was of course, cut off just as you described…
…but now it looks perfect:)
Adam
Awesome!
I’m glad I could help.
thanks for the template
Hi there!!! I love the excerpt of your book I just came across when attempting to improve the appearance of my FB foto.But thanks for your help – shame Facebook don;t have something similar!
Diana,
Thanks so much for sharing your tips on how to create a beautiful Facebook profile with ease. I get so frustrated with the limitations with uploading my photos on Facebook. I would just throw my hands up and move on to something else. I finally told myself, “NO MORE!” I am so happy that I found your post because I have been able to upload the photos that I really want.
I look forward to future tips and valuable content from you. I hope you have a fantastic weekend.:)
Many blessings,
Stacie Walker
What size If I created a Keep Calm? I asked it because If I put the keep calm not all parts are seen plss tell !!!! Thanks..
Awesome information. i tired to fix image on facebook profile page and to do this your article is very helpful to me. thanks again “ustandout”.
Thanks for share this information. it’s really help me