Picasa Tip: Make a Collage for your Facebook Cover Photo

If you have a Facebook page, you may want to custom design the Cover photo.  Picasa’s Collage tool is a great way to do this.  If you are a Geeks on Tour member, we recently made a complete ‘Short Course’ on using the Collage tool.  This tip is taking just one piece of that course and making it freely available for all.

Facebook Cover Photo’s Size

The key to making a Facebook Timeline cover photo is the dimensions.  Or, more specifically the ratio of the length to width, known as the Aspect Ratio.  A little bit of research turns up the fact that Facebook’s ideal ratio is 851X315. Not quite sure why it’s 851 – that sounds a bit odd to me.  850X315 works fine.

To accomplish this with Picasa, you need to set a custom aspect ratio.  On either the Crop dimensions drop-down box, or the Page Format drop-down box, you’ll see the ability to ‘Add Custom Aspect Ratio’ at the bottom of the list.  Choose that and just enter 850X315.  See a previous tip: Resizing a Picture’s Height and Width.

Steps for a Collage to be a Facebook cover photo

1. The proper aspect ratio for a Facebook cover photo is 850X315 (see tutorial video: Resizing Pictures to width and height)  Use the page format setting to change to that ratio.
2. Re-crop the background photo to the 850/315 ratio as well.
3. Shrink and move 3 little photos to bottom right in order to make room for your profile picture (avatar) in Facebook
4. Create collage, then Export results.  Select 850 as the export size (this is not required, Facebook will resize as long as the proportions are right.)
5. Log into facebook and hover over your cover photo,click where it says ‘Change Cover’ and Upload the exported collage.
6. Save Changes

Here’s a tutorial video to show you exactly how it’s done.

Many more tutorial videos are available for members at GeeksonTour.tv/Learning-Library  Join Today – it’s only $58/yearly.