Recently I stumbled across an issue that simply drove me nuts and up against the wall trying to figure out a solution for it. After about 3 hours worth of research, some friendly trial & error, and of course use of previous skills and experience I was finally able to to resolve the problem. If you’re like the thousands perhaps millions of people out there struggling with the profile picture upload on your fan page of Facebook then you’ve found the right place for a resolution.  It appears that the image formatting of certain images that are being used as a profile picture on Facebook are being rejected by the system.

The problem that I ran into recently was that I was simply trying to replace the profile picture for my company’s Facebook fan page with a new one.  After several tries and using different image file types I simply couldn’t get the picture to upload.  All I kept getting was an error box that annoyingly was giving me an error prompt saying Image size too large.  Try a smaller image.  At this point I became quite a bit frustrated considering the fact that I tried to upload the same image in several different file formats (.jpg, .gif, .png) and still nothing.  I did check the image size as well which according to Facebook’s guidelines it meets the allowed size.  For those that aren’t aware of the profile picture dimensions they are 200 px width x 600 px height.  If you attempt to upload a larger image then you will get an error similar to mine.

The Analysis to Facebook Profile Picture Issue

When everything fails, Google is there to save the day.  Considering that I’ve been working with Google since around 1999 I was convinced that there was a solution out there and all I had to do was some minor research on it.  And, so I Google’d my issue!  After going thru a few listings I found out that I wasn’t the only one out there that was having this very problem.  It seems to be that Facebook could never really find a workaround to the image library and the processing that takes place each time you attempt to replace you profile picture.  For the non-technical crowd in Layman’s Terms that translates to simply the fact that you can not upload a picture that does not meet a certain type of formatting.  That sucks, I know!

My Temporary Solution

I literally performed several search queries in Google until I stumped upon one that seem to work.  So, for those of you that may be having the same issue as I did here’s a solution to how you can modify your facebook fan page picture and upload it successfully.

1. You need to download a copy of AZimage 2.5.0.1 which you can download here.  The program is shareware and it comes with a 15-day trial.  It may be wise if you purchase the program in the longrun.
2. Create your fancy profile picture image using your friendly graphical editor such as Adobe PhotoShop.  Save the image either in .jpg, .gif, or .png file format on your desktop.
3. Launch the AZImage application (post installation obviously) and transcode you original into a Facebook format.  After you have done so, upload away on your FB profile.

There may be other solutions out there for fixing this issue although this is one that worked for me so I wanted to share it with you.  If you happen to find an alternative to this situation feel free to share your input.