Knowing how to resize, crop, rotate and add text to an image will enable you to do a lot of the basic image tweaks quickly without having to pay a graphics designer. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still have a graphic designer, but for quick things like profile pictures, Facebook covers, images for your blogs, memes to share on social media, you can do a lot for yourself.
To put all these skills together, let’s make a Facebook Cover.
1. Set up your new project
The first thing you need to know is what size your finished product should be. Facebook cover images need to be, as of this writing, 851 by 315 pixels. Keep in mind that the profile picture in the lower left side of the cover photo will cover up some of the picture. That picture takes up about 2.5 pixels from the left to the right, and from the bottom about the same.
Click File > New Project – Then fill out all the information asked for in the dialog window that appears.
Click OK at the top right.
Your canvas is now open so you can begin putting what you want on it for your Facebook Cover.
You may want to add a new layer as a place holder so that you avoid covering up important information with your profile picture.
Click File > Browse in Bridge – This will open up a new window where you can browse your computer as well as other places for the image. Find the image you want to use and drag it to your canvas.
Simply point to the image you want and drag it to your original canvas. It will automatically make a new layer that you can manipulate. In this case we’re choosing the profile image spacer which will be deleted later but is to avoid adding words and objects that will be covered by the profile image.
Now you can move on with the rest of your cover design.
2. Choose images
Using Bridge again, like in the example above, to find and of the images you’d like to put on the background of your Facebook Cover. In this case, we are going to add text first then bring some images in to enhance the text.
3. Choose a quote
You can choose a quote or words to put on your Facebook page cover. If you choose a quote be sure to accredit the person who said the quote. To add words, click the text icon and add a text box to where you want the words.
Then type the words you want in the text box. Save as you go so that you can move on to the next thing you want to accomplish.
4. Put it all together
You want to make it look good, add more images, more text, rotate the text, or add other elements that you want on your Facebook cover image. When you add more to the image you may need to highlight a particular layer, and arrange the layer differently. On the tool bar the order of operations is, click the layer you want, then click Layer > Arrange > Bring to Front (or back).
Activate the placer image and then delete it.
5. Save it
Then save as a Photoshop image and as the type of image you want to upload for your Facebook cover which in this case is a JPG file.
Now you can upload it to your FB Profile. Your image will not be in the way of the design or the words and it will look great.
Now it’s your turn. With just these few skills you can do a lot. You can make Facebook covers like above, flat book and product images, memes for social media, and images for blog posts to make your blog posts stand out.