Why Handmade: Creating a Facebook Banner with PicMonkey, Part 3

by Lynn Mohney of Prunella’s Workshop

This is it! The last installment. Phew! We have all been busy editing our product photos, right? Today is the exciting day where you get to see all of your hard work come together into one amazing banner, which we will upload onto our Facebook pages.

I made a couple of changes to my photographs. If you recall, I had a fancy frame around it, and I placed a label with type. I included both for the purpose of the tutorial, but I chose to remove them for the final banner. They felt cluttered to me, but this is a matter of preference.

For a Facebook Banner photo collage, you are going to need as few as three pictures, and as many as seven. This is entirely up to you. You may also want to include your logo. You will need a digital copy in .jpg format. It will need to be significantly under 851x315 pixels, as this is your entire banner. You can size your logo in the Basic Edits screen.

Making a Photo Collage

Step One:

Click on the Collage Icon in PicMonkey. It will automatically bring you to the files on your computer. You can select multiple files at once. Find your photograph, select it, and click choose in the right hand bottom corner.

On your left, you will have all of the photos you have chosen for your collage. I have a working theme of work in progress for my banner. My previous banner focused on my Viking turtle brooch line. You may have noticed you cannot see the entirety of every photo. Do not be concerned. These are just thumbnails. Also, you will notice the bottom right thumbnail is my company logo.

I have selected seven items for my banner, but I don’t have to use every single one. I have found it is easier to have one too many than one too few at this stage. You may have a photograph that just doesn’t want to play nicely in your collage. It’s easier to swap it out for another one.

If you missed a picture, you can easily retrieve it by clicking on “Open Photos” in the blue thumbnail. It will bring you to a screen where you can select to obtain photographs from your computer.

Step Two:

Now we need to choose a layout for our collage. Click on the Layout Icon. Your pictures will disappear, but they are not gone. They are still in the Photos tab.

PicMonkey makes this really easy for us. They have three different layouts for FaceBook banners:

I actually can make adjustments to the layout if I prefer. For example, I can get rid of a photo cell by running my mouse over it and clicking on the X that appears. The other boxes will fill in the space. I can also stretch or shrink the cells by clicking and dragging the gutters. However, I don’t recommend playing with the layout dramatically until the photos have been placed.

Step Three:

Return to the photo tab. You can AutoFill your photos in the middle menu, or you can drag and drop them from the left palette to the place of choice. AutoFill is faster, and you can still move the photos around as you like, by clicking and dragging:

Uh oh! That pesky logo didn’t fit perfectly. I have a few options. I can change the proportions of the other pictures, or get rid of a couple of photos. I can also elect to not use the logo.

Step Four:

Maybe you have an odd number of pictures and an empty cell. Rather than leaving it blank, you can use a swatch from the swatch menu. You can even add type over the swatch later (you will want to finish your collage completely first.)

Step 5:

The Background menu will allow you to change the spacing between the photographs, and round the corners. You can also change the background to any color available in the spectrum. See below for an example of what I can do (but not what I chose…)

Save your work. You are ready to upload to your Facebook page.

Step 6:

Go to your Facebook Page. Hover your mouse over the banner area and a box will pop up that says “Change Cover.” Click on it, and a menu will pop up. Choose to upload photo. Find your collage banner, and click on it. Click the “Choose” button in the lower right corner. Congratulations! You just made a Facebook banner using PicMonkey!

Of note, after spending very little time with PicMonkey, I have found I can create a new banner for PicMonkey in about 15 minutes.

If you want to see my new Facebook banner come visit my page at: https://www.facebook.com/PrunellasWorkshop . I’d also love to see what you did with yours!