Social Media

Facebook Screws Your Careful Crop Yet Again

Posted by Rikk Flohr on April 10, 2013

Posted in: Opposing Viewpoints, Output, Social Media. Tagged: 4:3 Aspect Ratio, Cropping, Facebook, Timeline. Leave a Comment

The new Facebook Timeline sucks — Period! Unless, of course, you only post 4×3 aspect ratio, landscape-oriented pictures. No Fine Art Allowed – apparently. After the gains made on the last Timeline update for the display of photography, it was time for Facebook to screw it up again.

This 4×3 (roughly) aspect ratio of a boat on Mirror Lake fares pretty well.

This portrait image of a Yellow-bellied Sap Sucker is a nice 2:3. Too bad Facebook crops it to 4:3 on your timeline and ruins your presentation.

And if your image exceeds a landscape oriented 4:3 aspect ratio as in this example of Peter and Paul Church in Hebron, ND, well, Facebook will chop off the ends for you – including removing a copyright watermark. Is that legal? Think that might be a DCMA violation. They probably have a hidden EULA to cover that…

No matter how carefully you crop your images, the new Facebook timeline will be your nemesis. It doesn’t care what you do, it will turn your image into a cell phone picture, bending your artistic will to their myopic window. Face it; Facebook doesn’t care about your photos.They need to preserve that space for advertisements.

Oh, and that fabulous Highlight feature I wrote about last June (Read Here). You can kiss that goodbye. It is still there but I am not sure what it does anymore. There is no visual difference.

Facebook must want to get rid of photographers. Maybe it is time to get rid of them.

Google Plus Ups the Ante in the Cover Photo Wars

Posted by Rikk Flohr on March 27, 2013

Posted in: Aspect Ratio, Output, Social Media. Tagged: Cover Photo, G+. Google Plus. 2 comments

it seems like just last month (but it was longer) that I wrote about Facebook’s change to it’s Cover Photo. You can read all about that here. Google Plus just did them one better by creating an even bigger and better cover photo experience.

Announced in the last month, and rolling out to users in stages, the new Google Plus cover photo is a reasonable 16:9 Aspect Ratio (the same as your HDTV coincidentally) making it quite easy to set your image editing software for the cropping down of your image. Facebook’s cover photo, by comparison uses the rather obtuse 8.51×3.15 aspect ratio. Google Plus also allows you a shot a precropping the image if the aspect ratio of your intended photo doesn’t match the new aspect ratio. You can even perform a crop for content to further hone your image’s presentation.

Google Plus also allows you to have quite a large image as a cover photo letting you to expand up to 2120×1192 pixels in screen real estate. If you have one of those 2560 pixel-wide monitors, you can fill your screen, account for the interface and still see your image at proper resolution – in theory. However, if you pick a photo with too low of resolution, Google Plus will scale upwards until your image looks like crap. So, if you are going to have a cover image, you better upload a big one or you will end up with this:

No doubt you will want to inspect your cover photo and make certain it can handle the dimensions G+ has to offer. One word of caution: the image has a semi-transparent overlay across the bottom that allows your Profile Pic and your user-specific data to stand out from the background image. If there is an important part of your image, say a copyright notice, it will be obscured to some extent as in the example below.

Social media is evolving to display things more dynamically and expansively. Visual pop is your first impression opportunity to wow your readers. Keep up with the trend and make certain your cover images can deliver all the website can offer.