Are the pictures in your Facebook album all look blurry, or out-of-focus ?
The reason is simple, your pictures are not optimized to be displayed in Facebook. Even though nowadays’ digital cameras can capture very high resolution pictures but you shall not upload your full-size pictures to Facebook album straightaway. That requires Facebook to resize the pictures to fit their page layout, and makes your pictures look blurry.
In fact, the optimal size for pictures in Facebook album is 604 pixels high (or wide). Therefore, before you upload the pictures to your newly created album in Facebook, try first resizing the picture to 604 pixels wide or high. Then, use the sharpening tool or unsharp mask within your image editing tool to sharpen the pictures. Lastly, upload those processed pictures to the album.
Update 1 : From January 20th 2010, Facebook has upgraded their photo album feature to support 720 pixels high (or wide). So if you have fast Internet connection, then why not resize the photos to 720 pixels and share those with your friends ?
Update 2 : From 2nd October 2010, Facebook upgraded their photo album to support upload of photos with 2,048 pixels. In addition, the site rolled out new uploader, friend-tagging feature and lightbox based viewer.
Update 3 : From end August, 2011 – now Facebook can display the photos up to 900 pixels (you can upload photos with bigger size, but it will downsize it to 900 pixels to display).
Update 4 : Just in case you are searching for this … the new Timeline Cover image / photo size is 850 x 315 pixels.
Here you go, one sample album from my Kyoto trip with my beloved Olympus camera (link to E-P3, but the photos were taken with E-510). Enjoy !!
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Mary, I think it is set by FB as a “feature”, not much we can do here.
Hi Michael, you don’t know how excited I was to find your posting. This has been the “quest for the Holy Grail.” I’m building my first Facebook “Official Company” page. Based on your tip, here’s what I’ve determined so far. I’m opening our company’s promotional images in CS3/Fireworks 9.0; downsizing the 800 px {wide} JPEG to 600 px {wide} x 343 px {high}; select the image and click on “Sharpen” one time; optimize the image from its setting of 242.09K, 38 Sec @ 56kbps to “JPEG Better Quality” that brings the optimized image down to 79.18k, 12 seconds @ 56kbps. I uploaded to FB these 600 px {wide} images into their “Photos” Tab, Photo Album wizard. So far, I’m liking what I see. Don
Glad you found it useful. Cheers.
Thanks so much!!!
Hi Michael…
In reference to your last 2 updates on pixel max size on Facebook…Isn’t 900 pixels less than the previous 2048 pixels? Please forgive me if that’s not an intelligent question or comparison…Just trying to learn. Also, if 900 pixels is the max (width or length) then what would the max on the other end be or should I let my software keep the appropriate aspect ratio (whatever it chooses on the other end)?
Thanks so much.
Hi Ken,
What it really means is you can upload picture to Facebook with size up to 2,048 pixels, but when Facebook display your photos, it will display up to 900 pixels. So what I will do is to keep the appropriate aspect ratio, resize the photo to 900 pixels (such that FB will not downsize it). Hope it helps.
Cheers, Michael
Hi Michael,
I took your advice and resized my pics to 900 pixels to upload to FB. It automatically rescaled to 720. I also tested in different size: 800, 960, 1024, 2048 and they all reverted same to 720.
Sometime I see photos of 960 pixels from others (right-click on image to check info).
Don’t know why.
Please help to clarify. Thanks!
Hi Chinny,
Good day. One possible reason is this 900 / 960 pixels feature has not rolled out to your account. Suggest to wait for some more time first and rety.
Hope it helps.
I don’t find this information for correct, because when I upload 900×900, facebook resize it to 550×550
Hi Oxus, may be you can try using a bigger monitor (with higher resolution) to see whether your pics are display in bigger size ? Hope it helps.
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