Create a Custom Facebook Cover Image in 4 Easy Steps with MS Paint

It's easy to create a montage or other custom image for the top of your Facebook Pages.

This is not really education technology topic (sorry!), but I've received a lot of comments and questions about the cover images that I have on my EmergingEdTech and Songwriter Facebook Pages and thought readers might appreciate this simple set of steps for creating your own custom image. This can particularly useful if you have a Facebook Page for yourself as a professional that is separate from your personal page.

So here it is, in 4 easy steps (note that while this approach uses Windows apps, the concepts should translate easily to the Mac):

1. Define your image size in Paint as 851 x 315 pixels. The Facebook Cover image is a 851 x 315, so you need to size your image to those dimensions. Open Paint in Windows and click on “Resize” in the menu ribbon and then select the Pixels radio button and set Horizontal to 851 and Vertical to 315. You will have to turn off the “Maintain aspect ratio” setting in order to be able to do this (see screen shot image below). 

If you want the background to be a color other than white, this is a good time to use the bucket (fill) tool to fill in the entire background with a selected color. You can also use an image as your background, just size it down to 851 x 315 in Paint.

2. Collect pictures that you would like to use in your cover image, and re-size them as needed. I like to use Microsoft Word as a scrap-board when I do this, but various apps can be used to do it. Just copy and paste images into a Word doc, where they're easy to re-size and then copy (right-click and select copy) and paste pictures into your Paint canvas to assemble your final image. Excel works fine for this as well as will any application that let's you paste multiple images and provides easy click-and-drag resizing.

3. Assemble your cover image in Paint by pasting in the pictures you collected and sized in Word. Remember that the logo image for your page is going to display over the lower left hand corner of your cover image, so you'll need to keep this in mind. Move images around a bit and experiment (hint: use Ctrl-Z to undo a paste or other change if you don't like it so much) to get things where you want them, in the right sizes, etc.

4. Sign into Facebook and upload your new image! After you sign in, hover over the cover image on your page – you should see a “Change Cover” button to click on. Click on it and upload your newly created image! I found I had go through a little trial and error, creating and uploading an cover image picture I created and then modifying it a bit and re-uploading it (several time if needed) to get it to look just right.

TIP: Another really helpful tool for collecting pictures is the free Snipping Tool that comes with Windows and lets you quickly grab any portion of your screen as an image. You just ‘snip' the portion of the image that you want and you can then paste it where you want to work with it. Just type “snip” in your Windows start search bar to access it (I pinned it to my Task Bar for quick access).

Of course, if you're a Mac user, the concepts here still apply, you'll just need to use different software to grab, size, and assemble the image.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Tutorial – 5 Fun Free Photo And Image Editing Applications For The Classroom
How Cool is Google Image Search? You Can Even Use a Picture as a Search Parameter!
Picture This: 5 Ways Teachers Can Use Instagram in the Classroom