COMPUTERS 101: Your Profile Picture

These days, most of us are on the computer for one thing or another. You may or may not already be using a profile picture for applications such as MSN Messenger, Facebook, Blogs, Epinions or other sites and programs. Perhaps the reason you do not have a profile picture is that you just don't like most pictures of yourself. You are not alone. As I mentioned in a previous entry, there are edits that you can do in common picture-programs that may be of interest to you and help you to come up with a profile picture that you like.

By the way, if you don't have a profile picture because you are worried about security or accessibility issues, you should investigate the application further to see if you can find out more about the ins and outs. One option if you aren't comfortable putting your own photo up is to select a scenery photo or free image from the Internet or your own picture files. To look on the Internet, go to:

http://www.google.com/

"images" - search

If you type in the type of image you want and add "+ free images" to your search, you may get non-copyright protected pictures that you can choose from. You can also type in "free clip-art".

There are lots of sites that provide free images, especially in lower resolution or clip-art. Yahoo Search also has an "images" option.

BACK TO PROFILE PICTURES:

- use your digital camera to take several face and full shots of yourself

- I suggest outdoor pictures with a scenic background (pleasant, but not distracting)

- Take the pictures in "your element" (though, I still recommend outdoors).

- With the proper lighting and a solid, plain background, you can also take good indoor close-ups.

- upload the pictures to your computer

- Use Microsoft Picture-It, Adobe or Picasa2 (free download) to edit your pictures

- try things like cropping, changing to black and white or sepia. Each time you make a set of edits that you like, click "save as" and save the file as a new name. This will ensure that you keep your original photo and can continue to try different edits.

Example of starting photo:

Photo (below) cropped, sharpened and saturated:

Photo (below) sharpened, cropped and sepia:

Photo (below) cropped and regular colouring:

Other ideas for profile pictures could be:

- scan in an old photo of yourself

- take a picture of one of your favorite items such as shoes or purse

- take a picture of your feet or other body part (discretion, please :)

- take a picture of your pet

HINT: User higher resolution when taking photos so that you can crop in closer, while still maintaining photo quality. This is useful if you want to crop in really tight, for example, to just a part of your face.

Time to go, company is here - can give more examples later. I LOVE trying to come up with good profile pictures. Check out the web and you will see that this is an art in itself. I have a long way to go...but enjoying the process of learning and experimenting...