One of our forum members asked about the new Facebook Timeline Cover photos, so I thought I would pop in and share a little information about them with you!

The size of a cover photo on Facebook is 851 pixels by 315 pixels (2837×1.05 inches at 300ppi). (If you’re interested in knowing what the other sizes for images using the new Facebook Timeline you can check out this site).

You can design your cover photo at 300ppi in your software, this is the best way to do it as the papers and elements from digital scrapbooking kits are created at this size. Keep in mind that the size of a cover photo is significantly smaller than the 12×12 size of scrapbook kits. You will need to make all of your papers and elements smaller to fit.

As far as creating your own cover photo, simply think of it as a layout. Create a new document sized at 851×315 px.

To make this easy, I am going to use a single paper for my background, a cluster from my Skies Are Grey collection and one photo.

Open your paper, I am going to use the crop tool to resize my paper to 851 pixels, the width of my cover photo.

Drag your paper onto your Cover photo document, hold shift while you do to center it on the canvas. It will hang off the top and bottom, but should fit perfectly from side to side. Adjust it so the area you want is showing on your cover photo canvas.

Next, I’m going to add my pre-made cluster. I’m also going to use the select tool to create a clipping mask for my photo.

Open your cluster and resize it the same way you re-sized your paper. I did it a little differently, I wanted to make sure it fit the height of my canvas, so I set the height in my crop tool to 296 (just smaller than the actual document size) and cropped it down. Then holding shift, drag your cluster onto your canvas. (Now is a good time to save your work)

Next, since the shape of this frame is a little unique, I am going to create a clipping mask for my photo. Make sure that you have the cluster layer selected in your layers palette and using your magic wand tool, click inside the open area of the frame. At the top of the screen go to the Select Menu—> Modify—>Expand Selection. Enter in a number of pixels to expand your area by, you want the marching ants to be just inside of the frame edge. I used 10 because my frame was fairly wide, but you may need a different number.

Next, create a new layer underneath your cluster and push CMD (CTRL) & Delete to fill that layer with a color (it will use your foreground color, but the color doesn’t matter, as this layer won’t be visible).

Let’s add our photo. Resize it the same way we did our paper and our cluster. Drag your photo on top of the new layer we just created and press CMD/CTRL – G to clip the photo to the clipping mask we made. Your photo will take the shape of the layer it’s clipped to! Resize and position your photo how you’d like it.

Add any finishing touches (I added the words “My Boys” to the blank tag). Flatten your image and save it.

Now, go to your Facebook page so we can add the image. If you hover over the area your cover photo will go, a little button will pop up in the lower right that says “Change Cover” place your mouse over and select the upload option. Follow the prompts on screen to place your cover photo. You’ll notice your profile picture covers a small portion on the lower right. If you don’t like what is covered, go back to your file and fix it!

That’s it! You now have a  custom Cover photo on your facebook page! Thanks for hanging with me! As a little treat, here is a “quick page” version of the cover photo I created in this tutorial. You may use it on your personal Facebook page if you’d like. Please direct any other interested parties here to download it for themselves!

DOWNLOAD QUICK PAGE VERSION HERE

Important Note: Please be sure to check the Terms of Use in all products before you use them to create your cover photo. Some designers do not allow the use of their kits for these purposes. When in doubt, contact the designer and see if it’s OK!

This has been a tutorial by:

Mandak
Nibbles Skribbles
Visit her Personal Use Shop and Commercial Use Shop to see all her goodies!

**theStudio and the author of this post have no affiliation with Facebook.