Google recently rolled out a significant overhaul to its Google+ user interface. The new design was created as a means of making the user experience more engaging and fluid. Among the several updates, a new profile layout featuring a Facebook Timeline-esque cover photo feature was also released. This new layout allows both user profiles and Pages to highlight a select group of photos or a panoramic image to help highlight their personality or brand. We have already seen various methods and online apps that lets users create customized Facebook cover photos, so now here’s how you can create customized Google+ cover photos.
Template and Dimensions
You can choose between two cover photo templates for your profile page: Panoramic Cover Photo or Scrapbook Cover Photos.
Panoramic Cover Photo
This layout uses a panoramic image across the top of your page. The dimension of this area is 940 pixels wide and 180 pixels tall. An image must be at least 940 pixels wide to upload, and if your image is larger, Google+ lets you crop it to feature only the section of the picture you wish to use.
You can have a JPG, PNG, or an animated GIF image as your cover photo. Though, many of your followers may not like a GIF cover, especially if it takes a long time to load. If you choose to upload a GIF image, pay attention to its dimension, as images that are larger than 940×180 pixels, would have to be cropped once uploaded. And cropped images are saved as a PNG.
Profile Picture Dimension
The profile picture that overlays your cover photo is of 250×250 pixels. Including the white border area and padding of 5px around the image, the final size of profile picture area is 262×262 pixels.
To create your custom covers, you can download this cover template file. Inside the ZIP file you will find a PSD file and a PNG image. You can use these as a guide.
If you’d like a more fancy cover, download this template, from Nicole.
Or if you don’t have Photoshop or any other photo editor, you could use an online cover creator like Gplusavatarmaker.
Update: Here are two more websites where you can create Google+ covers, plus they also have cover galleries:
- +Covers: http://www.googlecovers.com/
- CoverPhotoEditor: http://coverphotoeditor.com/
To do so, head over to Gplusavatarmaker page, upload any image from your computer or provide an online image’s URL. You are then shown a preview of the selected image (as seen above).
Next, place the image exactly how you want by moving it around. You can also adjust its color, contrast, hue, and zoom out or in.
And once you are happy with the image appearance, click on “Save Banner” and “Save Profile Picture” buttons to save the cover photo and profile pictures to your computer.
Next, go to your profile page on Google+ and upload the downloaded images.
That’s it! You now have a customized Google+ profile page.
Scrapbook Cover Photos
The second cover layout mimics the earlier Google+ profile format by displaying a row of five images at the top. Each image thumbnail is of 110×110 pixels. When one clicks on an image, a larger version of it is displayed.
I have already covered ways to create this layout earlier, check out the post here.