How to Size your Facebook Profile Picture & Thumbnail

by Diana Urban on June 28, 2010

Facebook Question Mark
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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:

fb-thumbnail-bad-examples

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.

facebook-profile-image-size

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.

Update 1/3/12: How to Edit Your Facebook Thumbnail

I’ve received several questions about how to edit the thumbnail image after uploading a new Facebook profile picture. Here’s how:

On your Facebook page, hover over the profile image and click Change Picture.

facebook edit thumbnail

Then click Edit Thumbnail below the image.

facebook thumbnail size

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!

facebook resize thumbnail

What brands have you found with awkward thumbnails on Facebook? Share the links in the comments below!

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Diana Urban (formerly Diana Freedman) is the founder of ustandout.com, a guide for making your web presence stand out using social media and other web marketing tactics. Diana works in advertising as a User Experience Manager at HubSpot in Boston. Start socializing with Diana by following her on Twitter.


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  • Mal

    This just doesn’t add up – Facebook is cropping my image by a lot more than a little border.

  • Guest

    facebook is not giving users the proper specs for uploading images. I follow the guidelines and our thumbnail always look blurry.

    • http://ustandout.com Diana Freedman

      Yes, that can be quite frustrating. There doesn’t seem to be anything the user can do about pixelation; Facebook is sizing down the images to ease the burden on their servers.

  • clueless

    how do you do the above? My company profile pic has a rectangle shape to it but in the thumbnail’s it cuts in half so it makes it look really bad… i have no idea how to switch it to the suggestions you make above? Can you please help me out with it?

  • Hrprojectstuff

    how do you do the above? My company profile pic has a rectangle shape to it but in the thumbnail’s it cuts in half so it makes it look really bad… i have no idea how to switch it to the suggestions you make above? Can you please help me out with it?

    • Guest

      On home screen click your picture to take you to your profile page > hover over the profile picture and you should get a little message saying ‘change picture’ > click that then go to ‘edit thumbnail’ (just underneath your picture) > click ‘scale to fit’ or try dragging the image around with your mouse until you get a good fit. Hope it helps

      • Erin

        Increase the size of your canvas in photoshop to a square shape…. ie 200px wide & 200 px height. Your logo should then be in the center.

  • http://www.sarasotahomesforsalenow.com Sarasota Realtor Mike Payne

    Thank you, Diana. Still, I wish FB would allow us users to designate a separate thumbnail instead of fumbling around.

    Question for you: Are you (or the site owner) using a plugin/widget to create the “Article by…” box with your image and bio/contact info? I really like that.

    Mike

    • http://ustandout.com Diana Freedman

      It’s actually not a plugin, it’s some code I added to a custom template in my Thesis theme. 

  • anonim

    thanks a lot for this tutorial, It was really helpful

  • Duplex

    Worked for me. Thank you!

  • Pratigya Mishra24

    I am new to use facebook api.Can u help me to change thumbnail size by API.

  • Shirlee

    Great post, we’ll try your suggestions!

  • Eric arterburn

    budweiser is using a separate thumbnail than their profile pic. how are they doing this?

    • Tony

      billions of dollars

  • Nancyb

    Thank you so much for the help!

  • Jamie

    It’s definitely a pain. I made my images 176 by 176 on a white background. It looks like they crop about 93 wide and slightly above the middle. If you try putting the main part of the image you want displayed in that area it seems to be relatively close. Hope that helps!

    • Bekken

      FB uploads and converts any picture to JPEG, even if I make a 200×200 image with “content” as 176×176 and store it as a “low-quality” JPEG and then open it and pixel-edit the JPEG so it looks ok,.. the FB image converter will “destroy” and pixelate the image… most disturbing! Please add a check if the uploaded image have the correct size and aspect ration, do not convert/resize!

  • Bung Iwan

    wrong. Facebook recommends 180 x 180 px

  • Anonymous

    Even facebooks question mark doesn’t fit in the box properly *giggles*

  • Bill

    any news on this – whatever i upload looks crap – have tried 180×540 200×600 yet the image just looks pixelated?

  • Bill

    how did you get it to not pixelate?  thks

    • http://ustandout.com Diana Freedman

      If you look closely around the words, you can see that the image did pixelate a bit. I think the color choices hides it well.

  • Anonymous

    I’ll do that :)

  • Noodles

    Its extremely frustrating trying to set up the 5pic pannel across the top. Trying to get the sizes right is really testing my patience!!! Thanx for the help

  • Originalkid1

    no fckin help

  • Originalkid1

    no fckin help

  • http://newsbreakthroughs.com Anish

    hm, okay. What about Twitter? Can you please write a post on what’s the optimum size for Twitter profile pictures? Twitter decreases your picture’s size significantly, it sucks.

  • Denequilibrium

    It’s 97×69 now.

  • Denequilibrium

    It’s 97×69 now.

  • Denequilibrium

    It’s 97×69 now.

  • Msrear

    whats your process my facebook profile picture is big

  • http://yourneighborhoodlawnservice.net/ Lawn Service in Orlando

    I am about to embark on my face book profile for my lawn service. This information is fantastic. just what I needed to get started, Thank you Diana. and if you a free moment come and visit us.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1525692214 Florin Carata

    Now facebook is telling when uploading too narrow pics: “Please use a picture close to a square”

  • http://ustandout.com Diana Freedman

    Awesome idea, I’ll put this on my to-do list!

  • Jerry

    Thanks for the article. For those asking how to fit the image or logo properly inside the thumbnail next to your posts:
    1. Click on edit page
    2. Click on profile picture
    3. Click on edit thumbnail
    3. Select “scale to fit” box.

    • Joe Knowbody

      I tried that and nothing happens.  It worked a couple days ago but not today.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001353802396 Mukesh Bhandarkar

    mac

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003242766480 Bob Stevens

    thanks diana, just what i needed to know.

  • Pingback: How to Change your Name on Facebook After Getting Married | U Stand Out: Social Media

  • http://ustandout.com Diana Urban

    Hi everyone, thanks for all of your comments! As requested in the comments and via email, I’ve updated this post with instructions on how to edit the thumbnail of the image after you’ve uploaded the profile picture. I hope that helps!

  • http://twitter.com/BigTwecrets Twecrets.com

    I feel they change this without letting many people know about it, 180 X 530 works well for all my images.  

  • Bharat

    thnq so mch ..i badly needed it :)

  • Guest

    It doesnt work when I try to change my thumbnail.
    When I drag it, the picture doesnt move and nothing happens when i click scale to fit.
    How can I fix this?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000636813710 Joshua Oseh

    ohk…my cropping is really wierd….doesnt work on IE and doesnt deselect on chrome…..#whattodo?

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