Facebook Cover Photo Ideas

For many of us, Facebook has become THE way for staying in touch with friends far and near, and that means our FB profile page is a virtual business card and welcome mat to the world. It's the first thing old friends see when they look us up. So why be boring? There are plenty of ways to keep your Facebook cover photo fresh and fun. Here are three ideas to give your FB cover a photo makeover.

If you'd like to show the world all of your talents (or at least some of them) in one clever cover photo, clone yourself!

It's amazingly simple to take several photos of yourself and merge them into one fun image using Photoshop Elements. Virtually anyone can do it. If you can drag a mouse, you can create a great-looking cloned photo that will impress your Facebook friends. Very little skill is required, but you will, however, need a copy of Photoshop Elements, as well as multiple photos shot from the same location, preferably on a tripod so the background lines up.

Photoshop Elements is one of the most popular photo editing programs on the market and often comes bundled with scanners or cameras. If you don't already own a copy, check with your friends of family. Someone is likely to have it. Then watch the video I created (see YouTube widget at right) to see how you can clone yourself in under 5 minutes.

If you leave enough room to crop your image to the standard FB size (851 x 315 pixels), you can upload your cloned image directly to Facebook as your cover photo. If you can't crop it to those dimensions, you can add a background and header as I did in the image shown here. Either way, you'll have a great-looking new Facebook cover in no time!

One of my favorite ways to create Facebook cover photos is to use Smilebox. This online service helps you generate multi-photo covers like the Halloween image above and the swimming collage shown at the very top of this page by providing templates that you can personalize and then upload to Facebook. All you need to do is add the photos and drag them into position. You can upload from one to six photos and choose from a variety of background colors.

I think these covers are particularly great for use during any holiday season, as you can match the colors to the occasion and post multiple images related to the theme. They're also great for year-round use to include all the members of your family. Check out the video at right to see how easy it is to use this program to create cool FB covers.

Another way to get creative with your Facebook cover photo and profile picture is to play off the fact that the cover image is very large and the profile picture is small. This gives you plenty of opportunity to have fun.

In the photo shown above, I took a photo of water coming from a simple spray bottle. I then jumped in the shower and used my waterproof camera to get a photo of me being splashed in the face with water. The result is the Facebook cover you see above.

You can get very creative with this concept. I've created FB covers showing me "holding up" the world and having a giant foot about to step on me. Just think of yourself as a character in "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and let your imagination run wild!

Once you've had a chance to look at a variety of different Facebook cover photo ideas and try the ideas mentioned here, you're bound to start thinking of more ideas on your own. So have fun with it! Your friends and family will surely enjoy seeing all the new ideas you come up with.