ClearRiver Advertising and Marketing

Keith, Love the new post. Great job. Thanks for taking the mystery out of this before now cumbersome process.

Keith, thanks for this tutorial
I am having a problem with the quality of the image. The red looks really blured not sharp - any tips regarding how to sort this issue? thanks Fabi

I am having issues getting a photo to upload CLEARLY to my fan page. I’ve tried the recommended sizes, but it still looks blurry around my graphics etc… Is there a certain dpi I should be utilizing perhaps? Thanks! :)

Bottom line… FB is compressing our images regardless!! as small as the profile pics are, they still compress the file creating blur/haze. I’m a graphic designer(8yrs) and my vector graphics are compromised every time.

Love the post Keith mate… but FB continues to compress right???

@Chip, @Amber, @fabiane The Facebook compresses is a mystery to me. I think what I’ve learned is that the more colors and complex your graphic (such as using gradients, drop shadows, etc) the more you will see the effects of Facebook’s compression. Interestingly, actual photos placed in your graphics tend not to show as much degradation.
You can simulate the results Facebook will give you by going to save for web in Photoshop setting the file type to JPEG and taking the quality down to about 50. You want to watch the KB size and get it near 20kb – that’s about the maximum size that Facebook allows for a profile image and by doing this in Photoshop you will see the same level of compression take place that Facebook would inflict on your image. I hope that makes sense to everyone.

Thanks,
Keith

Hey Keith! Than you! Is is possible to upload a profile picture and the offset for the thumbnail with the graph API?

Thanks so much for the helpful information. There is so much to learn.

For the life of me, I can’t get out logo to display without major compression.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aerial-Video-Systems/97879322036?created

However, other companies seem to have figured it out.

https://www.facebook.com/Ford.Competicion

https://www.facebook.com/foxsports

Anyone have any suggestions for me?

OK, so far I’ve reached the best results ever by:

1) Image 720 px wide
2) Flatten and convert to LAB Mode
3) Select Lightness channel
4) Unsharp Mask - your settings will vary
5) Convert to RGB
6) Save as .gif - WEB option

I’m still open to methods to make it look even better.

Thank you, this helped out a bunch! I like the clean lay out of your website too!

-ZAP-

Nice post.Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful!

Thanks Keith for the very informative article. I followed your directions from the old to the new update here and still even when editing the thumbnail and move my business log around I could not get it to look right so I used the handy ” Shrink to Fit”  and voila. While the image is quite small its still much better then it was.

Chris

I have a quick question for you guys. I keep trying to upload individual photos to the Photostream & every time they look a bit pixelated. Is there anything I can do to eliminate this? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much!

I noticed you are categorized “Advertising Agency · Marketing Consultant · Web Design · Midland, Michigan”  How and where did you do that?

Thanks for all the information.  For some reason my unpublished facebook page does not have a photo strip.  I’m sure the solution is simple.  Can someone let me know what is going on.  Thanks

ok…so I was doing this successfully but today it seems that Facebook is asking me to ‘make the picture more square’ and won’t upload my long pics. Any ideas???

Wonderful tips. This is great for us learning without a shop to work in.

Got a related question: how do you optimize your images to fit the thumbnails across the top of your page without horrible dithering?

I posted a status which was commented on.  I would like to upload a picture now onto the thread instead of starting a new one, but I can only seem to leave written comment. Any advice?

I’ve tried all types of techniques but Keith is right - Facebook is applying compression no matter what you do. I’ve reduced a logo to 180px, 256 colors RGB and a 9kb file size and it doesn’t matter - FB will still compress the photo and you’ll see “blotches” appear since FB is recompressing your file as a low quality jpeg.

One more comment - I just experimented uploading a 64 color GIF file of our logo and 180px wide with only a 7kb file size—Facebook recreated it as a low quality jpeg. Creating the same as a 16kb JPEG of very high quality results in Facebook recreating that JPEG too. My conclusion - there is nothing you can do at the moment to make your logos look good since Facebook is recreating your jpeg as a low quality jpeg image with high compression making the image look bad, even with few colors.

The BEST I was able to do is to save the photoshop file as web restrictive colors (ended up being about 11 colors) and even that showed some jpeg compression, just less than it was before. I had to get rid of the shadowing effect. My conclusion is that there is no way to be able to get a sharp profile picture for a sharp logo any more since Facebook’s jpeg compression algorithm is set too low automatically and doesn’t care whether the file size is small enough that high compression should not be used.

Thanks for this article. Do you have any recommendations regarding creating the images to upload.. non-complicated software etc? Thanks again..

@Martin if you’re on a Mac try http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

For the PC I’m not sure but I do know that GIMP http://www.gimp.org/ is a popular open source graphics program that’s very similar to Photoshop (it too works on the Mac).

Hope that helps!

@tracy - sorry we don’t allow images to be posted to our comment section. Thanks for wanting to contribute though!

wow, Keith, not only a great post, but your commitment to getting everyone help is AWESOME!  Believe it or not I read all of the comments from the previous post and learned so much just from your responses, even though I was not having any of those problems I know how to deal with them if I do! 

Now on a related(ish) note…how do you get your full size image to re-size to fit in the banner?  Is the trick in the tagging?  I’m bald on one side from pulling my hair out over it.  Would love any tips!

Thanks Kelly, I try to keep up - but don’t always do it in the most timely manner.

By the banner do you mean the row of images across the top of the page? I’m not sure what you are asking…

i tried to get the most out of my profile picture, I am unable to give my picture more length. I followed your visual instructions, but some how its not working. I’m not sure if its me that is doing something wrong. Please help.

Great post update! I knew they changed the width but didnt know about the ratio switch.

Whats the best format for uploading the image, im usina jpg with 72 dpi and it still seems to always pixelate when its uploaded.

yes, Keith. The row of images across the top of the fan page.  Yours are the full size when you click on them, but sized properly in the smaller ‘thumbnail” image across the top of the page.

@Kelly, there’s actually a trick to making those images behave that way and I’m actually in the process of writing a blog post to explain how I did it, so stay tuned.

I’m waiting with baited breath! Can’t figure it out for my life.

Thanks Keith!

Thanks so much for the great tutorial. Bookmarked!

Any idea what is the ideal width for an album photo?

so when I add one and it appears as a wall post it will utilize the maximum width of the wall post area??

Thank you for a great tutorial though.

Hello,

I am very grateful for your information on expanding the logo for facebook; however, I am unable to figure out how to get the added length for mine.  Can you assist me please?

Thank you in advance for your consideration of my request.

Kind regards
Wendy

Amin, maybe you’re looking for this?..:) @ allfacebook.com/facebook-profile-photo-hacks-2009-02

Great post, Keith. Thanks for the insight!

T h a n k
Y o u
  :D

greetings from poland Keith, this was very helpful for me!!

How do I edit a photo, like put captions or change the color of it?

hey sir…!!! i created a logo in illustrator CS5.1 and saved it for web and devices and tried to upload it in facrbook….but facebook rejected it….wat could be the reason…??? how can i upload it…???

Tried uploading a photo that was 150x533 and Facebook doesn’t allow you to add that photo because it’s either too longer or too small (it says). I think they’ve changed their allowance for Page profile photos for some reason. I see other pages with longer photos on the left side, but it doesn’t appear that FB is allowing to upload those longer images anymore. Even when trying to adjust using the FB crop tool, it just kicks you out when you try to say “Done Cropping.” Any ideas?

@Scott, you are exceeding the maximum ratio of 1:3.

Make your image either shorter or wider.

Thanks,

Keith

Very useful.  I only wonder how long before fb changes the layout again. ;{

Thanks for sharing this post!

Thanks for the post Keith. Much appreciated. I created a new Fan Page today, but for the life of me FB doesn’t want to upload my 180px by 540px Profile pic. I keep getting ‘Try to pick something closer to a square’ ?! Has anyone else experienced this lately? I’m thinking FB has narrowed the goal posts on us…or is it just me.

Many people are using facebook and hence there is always need for some updates in such social networking sites.

Just a question Keith. For some reason when I comment on other Facebook pages I can’t I see my Facebook avatar (thumbnail) image.  It just shows the default space. My avatar does appear when I comment on my page so I know it can be reduced. Do you know how to fix this?

Great information… Thanks! Now if Facebook would leave their site alone I may actually learn my way around.

I was having problems with our graphic looking really compressed after saving it in PS at 50% quality. I then tried saving it at a 100% quality jpg and it looks much better on FB! So maybe when you give them a higher quality original they can make better versions their end. I’m guessing they compress the original by X% so the more data you send them originally the better they can make. Hope that helps.

I’ve pulled my hair out trying to get the profile pic to be sharp and clear. Tried the tips here to no avail. In the photo album it looks pretty good, but not in the profile.

Great tutorial though and I’m pining this on my Pinterest board in Marketing. I’ll keep watch on any updates.

Thank you for this information. Any idea why I can’t adjust the thumbnail version when editing the profile image. I get the crossbars, but nothing moves and even when I try to save the image nothing happens.

Great explanation, exactly what I was looking for! :)
Great final result with these tips!!!

What resolution do you recommend for these files? I’ve loaded logos into Facebook, Twitter and Google+ at 72 dpi, 150 dpi and 300 dpi, and they always look fuzzy. I keep trying different file formats and sizes. What am I missing? Any best practices out there?

For the love of all things sacred I need some help, before I headbutt the screen!

When I upload a 180x540 image, I can get the option to select the section of the larger image; however once selected I still only have a thumbnail the size of a small fingernail.

I know I must be doing something wrong, but I have no idea what?!?!??!

Help appreciated and a guaranteed (‘ish) place in heaven, well if not it’ll definetly get you brownie points!

Guy

@Newton as far as I know FB hasn’t changed their minimum dimensions, so I’m not sure what the problem is.

@Dawn Unfortunately FB compresses the images a lot - I wish I could find a good solution - that’s just something you might have to live with.

@Dustee I make all of my FB profile images in photoshop at 72 dpi (standard screen resolution) using the exact pixel dimensions that I want - the fuzziness you see is just FB compressing the images.

@Guy I tried replicating your problem but I can’t see your problem - can you give me more information?

@ Keith - I got Facebook to accept a 180 x 483 profile photo @ 72dpi for my new fan page. Facebook would not accept 180 x 540 image.

Hi Keith, just read through everything from last year. Sounds like I am having a problem others have had. FB lets me upload my image (176x540) into my photos but says it is too long for my profile.

Any help would be great. Love all of the information about the thumbnail.

Hi!
Excellent results using your tutorial. One of our practinioters (a student from the local college in Allgäu), had the task to create a facebook page with simple customized design by finding materials alone using internet. He found and used your tut. We would like to thank you for the educational part :).
Cheers,
I DESIGN STUDIO
p.s. here is the result for the curious ones:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Castra/233740553377454?ref=tn_tnmn

It’s strange, I’m having the same problem as Guy. My image uploads and displays fine, but when I’m in the thumbnail selector the image is already about 25% of its original size. That means that the ‘window’ I move about ends up selecting about 200 pixels worth of the original image, but shrunk down to 50 pixels. JPG created in PhotoShop CS5.

how i make moving picture as photo profil on FB?

It doesn’t work to me… even if I tagged in reverse order they mix every time I update the page

https://www.facebook.com/Buzzsetters?ref=tn_tnmn

Thanks for the post it was really helpful.

Quick question what did you use to build your website?
Just asking. :)
-Adrian

@Adrian glad you liked the post. We use ExpressionEngine for the CMS on our site - it’s a great product and highly recommend it :)

Keith
Hoping you can help. I have created a simple logo with letters only. I have put the file in every size and format from png to jpeg to bmp to tiny to reg size.  Nothing I do seems to keep it from getting this blurry/sort of ghost effect behind the letters. I have created the file in RGB and CMYK..using photoshop- just can’t get it to stay smooth -no blurr.  Any suggestions?