I’ve had a Facebook page for a couple of years. It’s kind of fun to see what friends and family members are up to. I didn’t really consider using it to show my photos, and still don’t. However, when Facebook introduced the cover photo a while back I started to think about what photo I wanted to use for that part of my page.
The size of the cover photo that is displayed is 851 x 315 pixels. That’s an aspect ratio of 2.7:1, definitely panoramic compared to the typical aspect ratio of 1.5:1 of a 35mm image. The entire cover photo does not show up because the profile picture is positioned over the lower left part of it. Those characteristics forced me to look at possible cover candidates differently than I would a typical image. I definitely wanted to use images that were either originally designed as panoramas or that could be cropped without loss of significant content. Also, the lower left corner of the picture could not hold anything important.
You can drop any size or shape photo in for a cover (as long as it’s not too small) and then drag it around to show the 851 x 315 piece that you’d like people to see. However, since I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my photos I prefer to crop and resize in Photoshop to generate cover images that are exactly 851 x 315 pixels.
After a while I realized that I should change my cover photo every once in a while in addition to changing my profile picture. The image above is my current profile/cover combination. I make no attempt to coordinate the cover and profile pictures. Each is changed arbitrarily as the mood dictates.
Some of my cover photos from the past year or so are shown below.
