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How To Hack Your Profile Picture In 30 Seconds




To say the Facebook profile hacks were well-received is quite an understatement. The initial gallery of our favorite profile makeovers has been linked by the likes of CNN ─who called it “Facebook profile art”─ and Mashable, and ten thousands of people have been busy pixel pinching with PSD files in Photoshop to achieve the Alexandre Oudin effect (just check the dozens of uploads to the Awesome Profile Hacks page). Now what if we told you you don’t need any graphics software anymore and that you can apply the Facebook profile picture hack in just a few mouse clicks?

The past week has given birth to a bunch of websites that will all resize, cut up and crop the hell out of your uploaded photos so you can “Reface your Facebook” (not our words, but The Drum‘s) without breaking any sweat. These tools will create a 180 by 540 pixels profile pic for you, and 5 of those small 97 x 68 pixels images to add to your Photostream. Some of the sites will automatically upload the images to your profile if you allow them, while other tools require you to upload everything manually and then tag yourself beginning with the right part of the image, working your way to the left part.

But before we continue, please check out the Facebook Profile Headers application we’re soft launching today and leave us feedback if you want to help. We’re still working out the kinks, so bear with us.

Now on to our overview of the Facebook profile hack websites we found along with a brief review of each. Thanks to all of you who told us about them.

One last tip: count the number of lines in your bio ─the text bit between your name and Photostream─  without the “Add you current…” and “Edit Profile” links to get the best results.

Facebook Full Page Pic Generator

The  FullPagePic website by vindimy was probably one of the first to automate the Facebook photo hack process and about 30,000 people have used the slice ‘n dice service so far. It takes your JPG, PNG or GIF image and spits out a zipfile with the separated parts. So much for the automatic part. Once you’ve uploaded and tagged the 5 photostream images and set the new profile picture, vindimy wants you to delete your bio text too because the FullPagePic service was optimized for zero-line biographies. Removing the education, work and location information might be a bridge too far for some of you.

» Go to FullPagePic.

Pic Scatter

Pic Scatter by Till Haunschild is powered by the advertising agency McCann Erickson Munich… and it shows! As soon as you’ve uploaded your image, you can zoom in and out, drag it around and tell it how many lines of bio (“info-text”) you have. This last option can help you see if it’d be better to add or remove a bio line to optimize the photo hack effect. When you’re finished, you can download the individual image files in a compressed archive (pic_scatter.zip) or publish them instantly to Facebook. All you have to do is set the Profile Picture and your profile hack is complete. There’s a little “Made with picscatter.com” banner at the bottom of your profile picture, but hey, it’s a free app and at least it’s not a big brand advertising on your profile… yet! :)

Pic Scatter

» Go to PicScatter.com.

MyPeex

Another site that lets you Alexandre Oudin Yourself is MyPeex. Adopting the Facebook step-by-step layout, it guides you through the hack in a way familiar to the Facebook registration process. You can drag the uploaded picture around and change the number of lines of your biography. Oddly, you can only select 1 or 2 lines, while bios can be completely empty but also up to five lines. It also choked on our PNG and GIF uploads, but JPG went down well. MyPeex does instantly upload your pictures to Facebook, which makes it a bliss to use. Be aware that the application advertises itself through an automated status update on your behalf, which reads: “If you want make your own special profile picture… go to www.mypeex.com”. Of course you can remove this from your wall if it bothers you, but note that there is no watermark on the actual profile hack.

MyPeex

» Go to MyPeex.com.

Facebook Profile Picture Generator

Upload your picture to ProfileGen.com and select how many “rows of data” you have in your bio (we’re only missing an option for 0 lines here). According to the clear instructions on the site, you then have to right-click and save all 6 images to your computer, upload them to a Facebook album and get your tagging on. Your profile picture will contain a small ProfileGen.com credit at the bottom.

» Go to ProfileGen.com.

FBCrop.com

This site is how it would look like if Facebook offered the hack themselves. Not that that’s ever going to happen :) You can upload your photo, select the number of lines in your bio (options for longer bios seem to be missing) and drag your image around to make it fit in the template. When you’re done, you can download all the picture files individually or as a zip file. Now all there’s left to do is upload the files and tag yourself. No watermarks or automated status updates here.

fbcrop.com

» Go to fbcrop.com.

Our final verdict: If you don’t mind the tiny advertisement at the bottom of your profile picture, we recommend using Pic Scatter for fully automated profile hacking with every tweaking option you’ll need.

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How To Hack Your Profile Picture In 30 Seconds Posted by on December 18, 2010 at 1:31 AM. Use this trackback if you're linking this story.

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