Facebook is one of the most popular websites on the internet and arguably the most well known social network. In addition to your display picture, Facebook allows you to specify a cover photo to be displayed on your profile. If this picture is too large you can reposition it. There are however, guidelines that you can follow to ensure that you get the best size and position for your cover photo and that the photo’s quality is not degraded too much.
Facebook’s FAQ gives us two valuable pieces of information about the cover photos:
- The optimal dimensions are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high.
- Photos should be less than 100 kilobytes in size.
If you open your desired photo in an image editing program you can ensure that it is the right size by cropping out the parts of the image that you do not want in the cover photo. Once the image is 851px x 315px you do not have to worry about repositioning and the entire image will be visible as a cover photo.
Facebook automatically adjusts the quality of large images and if your image has text or logos the quality loss is very noticeable. Ensuring that your file size is below 100KB will also ensure that Facebook does not reduce the quality of your image dramatically after it is uploaded.