Make a Panoramic Picture in Your Facebook Profile

The latest changes in Facebook's interface included a new five picture strip at the top of the profile page. This strip shows the latest pictures in which you were tagged and can be manipulated in many creative ways. One of the ways is to make a panoramic picture from this strip, and this article will show you how to achieve this.

Steps

  1. Find a panoramic picture. Choose one that you took yourself or even one that you've found on the web. It should be as narrow as possible, since the height of the Facebook strip is very small. Copy the panoramic picture you've chosen to Paintshop. Other graphic-editing software can be used, but not necessarily the same way as shown in this article.
  2. Select the "Crop" tool. Mark the part of the picture you want with this size: 493 width, 68 height. Crop it. Now you have the actual size of the strip. You can choose a bigger part of the original picture by marking the "Maintain Aspect Ratio", and by stretching the cropping tool's selection. This will maintain the picture's proportions, but you'll need to resize the picture back to its original size afterwards.
  3. Choose the "Crop" tool again. Now mark this size: 97 width, 68 height. Start from the left side of the picture, and crop.
  4. Save the result by a name of your choice. This will be a small rectangle picture that can be used as one of the "tiles" of the panoramic picture. The example shown here used "1", "2", "3", "4" and "5" for convenience.
  5. Undo the cropping to go back quickly to the previous step. The selection of the crop tool should still be there, so use the mouse to drag the left side of the selection to the right side, and over it. This way you can select the crop size of the second tile, from the point at which the first tile ended. Make sure the size of the width is 97 (the height shouldn't change). Now crop it.
  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have five saved tiles that form the panoramic picture.
  7. Open your Facebook page. Create a new album by selecting the "Photo" icon under the profile pictures strip, and then select "Create an Album".
  8. A pop up window will appear, asking you to choose the pictures for the album. Choose all the saved tiles (1 to 5). The pictures will be uploaded, and in the meantime you can write a name for the Create a Web Album With PhotoMeister. When you're done - click the "Create Album" button. A new screen will appear with the option to publish the newly created album. Skip it, and click the "Back to album" button.
  9. Tag yourself in every picture, but start from the last picture. The reason for this is because the strip on your profile shows the latest tagged picture of you – on the left. It's easy to move to the next picture you need to tag by hitting the "Previous" button, on the top.
  10. You're done! Go back to your profile and check if the panoramic picture appears as it should.

Tips

  • You can add text, icons or whatever you want inside every tile.
  • A free mac program that works well is GIMP. It shows you the pixels of what you're cropping.
  • If you use a panoramic picture with a white background, it could blend seamlessly with Facebook's white background.
  • You do have to publish your new album first then go into the album and tag your photos accordingly, last to first.
  • A good program is ArcSoft Panorama Maker

Things You'll Need

  • Facebook account
  • Digital photo
  • Paintshop or similar editing software

Related Articles