Changing the Cover on Facebook (“FB”) can be a bit of a challenge because the banner is so wide and photos normally don’t fit well. Whether you want to change the cover on your personal page or on a group page, it can be easily done thanks to Panstoria’s Artisan, the recent replacement for Creative Memories’ Storybook.

1. Using the Snipping Tool, cut the exact shape of the cover photo on FB and paste it onto a blank page in Artisan. Now you have a template to work with. In case you don’t want to use the Snipping Tool, you can cheat by entering these dimensions in the properties section: personal or page cover photo is 8.5 x 3.125, a group cover photo is 8 x 2.5. Keep in mind the little box in the lower left which is going to block out part of your photo!

2.  If the photo or artwork you want to use doesn’t fit well, you can always center the photo and then add solid colors or some design on the sides. I recently had some event artwork I wanted to use for a group page but it was too tall. I cut it down to what I thought looked good, blended the edge on each side and then made the background color to match the artwork. I recently updated it to add the registration deadline. All of the members of the group shouldn’t miss the deadline now!

3. Even if your photo would fit into the banner just fine, with Artisan you can add frames or special effects. Add your photo to the page and then, using the Align options, make it the same size as the banner. Then you can crop and add mats or frames. In fact, you can drop a paper onto the photo part if you just want some decoration.

4. Save your new photo or artwork as a jpeg (I have a Facebook file for these kinds of projects) and then change the cover on your FB page. Easy, peasy!