Customize Your Facebook Profile

Facebook is often criticized for not being "customizable" like the other social networks like Twitter and MySpace. Well maybe that criticism is unwarranted as you will see in this tutorial. All it takes is a little creativity and you have a psuedo customized Facebook profile. For this tutorial you will need access to Photoshop (or another editing program that enables you to make custom slices) so if you don't have Photoshop you mine as well stop reading.

To begin you will need to login to your Facebook and go to your Profile page. It should look similar to the picture above. Once you are at this screen you will need to take a screen shot by pushing the Print Screen button on your keyboard. This will save your screen shot to your clipboard so that you can open Photoshop, open a new document (Ctrl + N on PC or Cmd + N on Mac), and paste your screen shot in the new document (Ctrl + V on PC or Cmd + V on Mac).

Once you have you screen shot pasted in you will want to select the slice tool, which is located in the group with crop tool. Now begin slicing the profile picture (the large photo on the left hand side) and the five small photos that are next to it. Each photo should have it's own individual slice as pictured above. Try to slice them as precise as possible. You will most likely need to zoom in (Ctrl + or Cmd +) to get them exactly right.

After you have sliced all six photos you will then want to select your Rectangle Marquee tool and select each slice area, deleting the areas after you make the selection. Again make sure that the selections are as precise as possible. Once you have deleted the selection areas you should have six empty areas as pictured above. At this point you may be asking, "Why not do the selection tool first instead of the slices?" Be patient I will explain that in a bit.

Once you have made your selection deletions you will want to select the photo of your choice and drag it onto your canvas. The photo should be fairly large so that it covers all six empty selection areas. You will want to move the photo around so that it is positioned exactly the way you want it (Your slices should show through so you can see how it is positioned). Again refer to the image example above.

Now that your picture is roughly where you want it you will want to go to your layers palette and move the image layer under the original layer that contains your screen shot. Now you can see what your photo will look like once you upload the photos to Facebook. Make your final positioning adjustments at this time. You will not be able to re-position them after this step.

Once you have the photo positioned correctly you will want to go to File>Save for Web and Devices. Make sure to select JPEG and adjust the Quality to 100 (these options are typically located on the top right of the screen. See Photo) and then hit Save. You will then select the desired save location and make sure to select the "All User Slices" in the Slices drop down menu and hit Save.

Now you have your images for the profile "hack" for lack of a better term. Open your internet browser of choice and go to Facebook (should already be open). Make sure that you are logged in and then go to Add Photos. For this tutorial's purpose choose the Simple Uploader because it is much faster. You will want to add the photos as you want them to appear on your profile from left to right (starting with the profile picture and ending with the fifth small picture).

Once the upload is complete you will want to tag yourself in all of the photos except for the photo that will be your profile picture. If you tag yourself in the profile picture it will mess up the order of the photos. After you tag yourself in the five small photos press save and you are done.

That is it! You now have a "custom" Facebook profile sit back and watch your friends drool. If you found this Hub interesting or helpful and want to see more like it, let me know in the comments below.