The software we use is sort of modeled after other popular social media sites, and as such you get to upload a "profile cover," or a large image that you think defines you and looks cool. This is mine, an image I shot with my phone early in the morning departing for Idaho a few years ago:



As many of you have noticed, the current version of the software doesn't allow you to reposition the photo you upload, so if you upload an image that is more like what comes out of your camera (3:2 aspect ratio), it will only show the upper portion and usually looks bad. As I scroll through my Community feed I see many images uploaded one after another, and I assume it's because you guys are looking for an image that looks good as a profile cover. I'm hoping the latest version will allow you to reposition after uploading so this step becomes unnecessary, but until I upgrade, the solution is to crop before uploading.

1. Crop your image as a wide rectangle (1194x478) before uploading. Use a tool like Fotor.com
2. Go you ME > My Profile
3. Hover over the profile cover image and click Change Cover.
4. Upload your pre-cropped file.
5. Hope for the best

The dimensions it will display at in the its widest mode are 1194x478. Many image editing applications will let you specify a ratio for the crop tool, so if you type in 1194 wide and 478 high, you can then scale the crop rectangle and maintain the aspect ratio. Sometimes you need to check a "Keep/maintain proportions" checkbox. If you do this on a high resolution image straight out of your camera, crop first using that ratio, then resize the cropped version down to 1194x478.

I found this cool website that has some easy tools that will allow you to edit your image without needing any software installed. I tested it out with a high res image and it allowed me to select a pic from my computer, crop, resize, and save back to my computer. Pretty slick.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Followed your step by step instructions and used the "cool website" link.
Easy peasy.
Thanks.

S-12Flyer wrote:Followed your step by step instructions and used the "cool website" link.
Easy peasy.
Thanks.

Looks good!

Is there a way to do this from an ipad?

Jeredp wrote:Is there a way to do this from an ipad?

Jeredp,

If the photo is already on your iPad, go to your photos and open the photo you want to crop. In the upper right hand corner, touch the "Edit" button. Now you will see several editing buttons on the bottom. Touch the "Crop" button. This puts a grid overlay on your picture, with touch/drag corners.

If the subject you want is near the center of the picture already, just "squish" (technical term) the corners down some, keeping the full width of the picture. If you want the subject offset, or you need to adjust the crop to center the subject, just play with the crop corners until it "looks about right."

When you get what you were looking for, touch the "Save" button in the upper right corner where the "Edit" button used to be, then save to your camera roll. Now the cropped picture is ready to be uploaded to BCP and revealed to the world in all of its glory!

Bumping this because I've seen a lot of profile covers in my community feed that are 3:2 instead of the 11:4 or whatever it is that works best. See above.

Bump... seeing more multiple uploads of images in the feed. Hoping to have this fixed before long so it works more like Facebook, but for now this is the solution.

OK, I went to fotor.com and gave it a try. Well the photo i want to use can't go to 1194 wide
but can go to 478 high. The photo is 960 x 720.

Any way to make it work? I'm not the most tech savy 19 y/o out their (in case you couldn't tell).

This is the photo.