Have you recently i.e. in the past year or so; tried to upload a Facebook cover image only to find that the quality looks like a dog’s breakfast? Welcome to the club.

I always managed to figure it out but forget the work around so decided this time I’d write it down (for me and consequently, for you too :).

Without getting in to too much detail, they compress images (we like to go fast right)?

Well… wait for it…

Your compression sucks monkey balls!

Many a bloggers claim to have the solution but I think I’ve found the best possible way to sneak that little bit of quality past the algo’s of Facebook to get the best result with their anti-social compression.

The Magic Forumla.

  1. Pick yourself a really nice image
  2. Open Photoshop
  3. Create a blank canvas that is exactly 851*315px (72dpi)
  4. Check your resolution is set to 72dpi. Image –> Image size –> Resolution (change to 72dpi if not set already).
  5. Do all your mods and pretty things (check out Social Media basics and Importance of Branding to help get it real good).
  6. Once ready to save, click on file –> Save for Web –> Under Presets (top right) select PNG-24 –> Deselect all the tick boxes including “Convert to sRGB” –> Save
  7. Now upload to Facebook and marvel at the wonder of your work.

The change is minimal but it is a hell of a lot better once on FB. Click on the image to open it (you’ll spot the difference then)!

Hope you enjoyed. Hope you find it useful.