How to Get an Awesome Facebook Timeline Cover Image

Recently my personal Facebook page was updated to the new "timeline". I kind of like it, but it requires a lot of scrolling down to see anything. 

At the top of the page is room for a giant "cover photo". I decided I didn't want a huge picture of little me in that spot. That's not very appealing to me. When I tried to put an artwork photo there it blew it up really big. I couldn't see all of it. So I thought, "What if I could make a photo mosaic of images that I *do* want on my page?" 

Look no further! I have the solution. And it's dead easy. 

Big Huge Labs creates a lot of fun things to do with your images. You can make jigsaw puzzles, trading cards, badges, calendars, and many other fun and funny choices. 

One of the most handy to me is the Mosaic Maker. There are many ways to customize photos, sizes (columns and rows), and where it can pull your images from. 

This is the main page of Mosaic Maker. These are the default settings. 

  

To make my mosaic for Facebook I needed to decide where to get my photos from. If I choose to pull my photos from Facebook I need to login. 

 

I want to fill my mosaic with my flickr set. I created a new set on flickr specifically for the photos I wanted to fill my mosaic. I could have also uploaded them individually from my computer, from a Facebook album, flickr photosets, flickr faves, flickr tags, or an individual flickr user. Here is my flickr photoset: 

These are my mosaic settings.

To fit in the Facebook cover image spot I chose a layout of "square tiles" with 8 columns and 3 rows. It shows a little preview of the shape the mosaic will be. You get 32 images for this size. (The maximum the Mosaic Maker allows is 36 images, but that's going to be too big for the Facebook cover spot.) 

I also have the option to choose the background color and the border color. I chose black for both. I chose 5 pixels as the space between images (the default). 

When "flickr photoset" is chosen the Mosaic Maker brings up the next box to enter the URL for the photoset. To find the photoset URL I opened the set on flickr and highlighted and copied the URL in the address bar. Then I pasted it in the box back at the Mosaic Maker page. It also lets me choose the page number of the set I want it to use if my set is more than one page. 

I clicked "Create". The next page opens my beautiful new mosaic. I can go back and edit it as much as I want if it didn't turn out like I planned. 

Then I clicked "Save" to download the image to my computer (pay attention to where it saved so you can find it). 

There are options to share it directly to flickr, Facebook, or an email address. Under the mosaic I made it has the HTML for the mosaic so it can be embedded in something like a blog post. I like that if you choose to use the HTML it makes links back to the photos so the creators get credit. (Play nice if you post a mosaic made with other peoples' photos and give the credits.) 

All the hard work is done. Now all I had to do was click "Change Cover" back on my Facebook timeline and upload my mosaic. Alternately, you could post the mosaic in your Facebook photo albums and choose from there. 

Ta! Da! 

[I'm no expert on pixel dimensions on web sites, but I think the image is roughly 850 pixels x 315 pixels. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.] 

Now you have the most awesome cover image! Wait - yours would be the second most awesome because mine rocks. :) 

- Vickie