Recent changes at Facebook allow you to have a little leeway in the process of how your images are displayed. It used to be you were stuck with whatever precropping Facebook did when displaying your image on your wall or your Timeline. If your image was not square, or worse still, Portrait, you took what you could get and that often wasn’t the most flattering crop of your image.
In the example above, the red-headed woodpecker is missing his head. Default positioning in Facebook decreed that the head be lopped off. In response to increasing competition for your social media time and the more photographer-friendly options out there among the competitors, Facebook now allows you to custom window your images.
If you click on the Edit icon that appears at the top-right of your image, you will see there is an option to Reposition Photo in the list of commands. Clicking this will allow you to grab your photo and slide it up and down or back and forth, depending upon the photo’s orientation, to create a more pleasing version of the image. This can be make or break for some images when competing for viewership.
A quick adjustment later and now the woodpecker has a head! As you post your pictures on Facebook, take a moment to double check the Timeline crop. Adjust it and more people might just take the time to view your image full-sized: maybe even like or comment!
You are limited to a square view and one direction of adjustment depending upon the landscape/portrait orientation of your original but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Facebook has a long way to go to compete for photographers’ attentions but you can’t fault this improvement.
Next time, we will talk about how Facebook has become panoramic-crop-friendly.
Rikk Flohr © 2012
When I reposition my highlighted picture moving it to the right to favor a poem that is cropped on the left side, it seems to work…then I click save. But when I refresh the page to see if it actually changed, it reverts back to the the original wrong position. It’s the same way every time I try repositioning it. Frustratingly, it was right the first time I posted it! then for some weird reason, the picture somehow repositions moving to the left thus cropping off part of the poem accompanying the picture. What am I not doing right?
What I want to know is, “Why does Facebook crop images only on the mobile web and mobile app versions?” – Facebook doesn’t crop images on the regular web version and I see no reason for them to be cropping now.
A second question is, “Why aren’t more people upset by this obvious bug?”
Pingback: Holy Crop!: The Year in Review « Holy Crop!