Question about Facebook Fan Page Images

Don't use whole images. Make a proper standards compliant design that wont get stretched out of proportion.

Oh and the magic number isn't 540px, its 520px.

Also, what the heck are you doing using 300dpi images for online use? 300 DPI is a print resolution. If you want to design at that resolution so you can print the designs as well, fine, but always downsample to 72DPI before you use them.

Your monitor can only handle a max of 72DPI and even high resolution displays tend to max out at 96DPI or slightly higher (I think the nokia 770 high res display is around 126DPI)

Either way, unless a client requests it use 72DPI for your designs.

Scrap what I said about 520PX, I just saw you were referring to profile images.

I starting using 300 dpi because I am having trouble with getting text in my graphics. At that pixel size the fonts turn out looking like pixel-ed boxes all around the edges. Is there a setting to fade the edges of the text. Just sux having to use 5pt font size and it not having any curvature.

I'd highly recommend a photoshop class.

You need to turn on the opentype anti-aliasing. It will be in a drop down menu on the top of the screen when you have the type tool selected. If you dont have it turned on it will say "none" the options in the dropdown menu are 'crisp', 'strong' and 'smooth' choose one of those.

Also, start the design at 72DPI. Create a new canvas at 72DPI, RGB and then start building from there. Your fonts will look fine.

Hey, I can tell you this, because you did not specify what file format you are using, your problem is probably related to that. These days you can use a high resolution JPEG and that gives you millions of colors in the graphic. Compare that to GIF which gives you a maximum 256 colors. The reason you are seeing what you call "pixelation" is actually probably related to colors and not to resolution.

So I do like to use 300 DPI for everything in Photoshop and then when you get ready to render a web graphic, use the "Save for Web" option and choose JPEG, and set the optimization to a high number like 90. If you are designing graphics for people in the backwoods of Africa where they still have slow internet, then sure, you can set the JPEG less than 90, but in most of the world these days 90 (out of 100) quality resolution is still going to be downloaded just fine, especially since most homes in the USA have broadband as of 2010/2011.

If you need the graphic to be transparent then make it a .pgn (24 bit) format, which can handle transparency. All of these options are available on the screen at "Save for Web" in Photoshop. There is a small drop-down menu that shows the different options. It will remember the last option you chose and default it to that.

I really don't know why people would use a GIF these days unless you intend to make an animation.

So, see if changing the file format solves your problem. Otherwise you really have to post more information about the problem you are having. Graphics are complex and have a lot of variables, and you are only posting a little bit of the information.

Other information that could be useful in solving this issue for you:

* What computer (PC, Linux or MAC)
* What program (Adobe or Corel, MS Paint, browser based, Gimp, etc.)
* What operating system (XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu Linux, OSX 8, etc.)
* What file format (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP -- all of which will display on the web)
* Resolution
* What effect do you have on the font?

It is true that under "text" when you have the text tool that you can choose a setting called "Sharp" and "anti-alias" and this can also help.

Cheers,

David Lieder

Aren't Facebook profile images 50px X 50px?