Free tool crops, resizes, retouches social media images

One of the most aggravating problems with Facebook status updates is never knowing what a photo will look like when you upload it to your profile or page and click the “Post” button.

Yesterday, I swore so loudly that I’m sure the neighbors heard me when I posted the status update at left. It accompanies a link to a blog post that discussed clever ways to promote your events.

One idea was to use an event hashtag on a signpost for the event. Only problem was, the damn hashtag never appeared in the photo! It’s right below the red arrow but got cropped out.

I see this all the time on other people’s posts. It looks dorky and amateurish, particularly on pages, which are used for business.

Social Media Image Maker to the rescue!

This free tool resizes and retouches your social media images. No more guessing about how much to crop off the original photo—assuming you have time to fool around with it in a program like Photoshop. This tool does it for you! Look at the long list of social media sites it can accommodate:

Here’s the best part: You don’t need to create an account. Just go to the Social Media Image Maker site and click on the social media site where you need help. I clicked, naturally, on Facebook.

I uploaded a long horizontal photo of Publicity Hound Anne Roos, a Celtic harpist and wordsmith who edits my ebooks. If I uploaded this photo, as is, to a Facebook status update, Anne’s head might get chopped off, with my luck. But I was able to crop it just above her head, so as much of the harp appears as possible, and I know exactly how the photo will appear:

When you’re done cropping you can add a filter by clicking on the stars icon at the top of the page. Filters are similar to those you’d use with Instagram but I didn’t find them of much value. 

Share this post with your web designer, graphic artist, virtual assistant or anyone else who helps you with photos. They’ll love you. (Sorry, but my blog is undergoing renovations right now and we don’t have the new Share buttons displayed yet. But you know what to do.) 

A hat tip to social media expert BL Ochman and her What’s Next Blog for this tool.

BL, by the way, teams up with two other brainy social media experts—Albert Maruggi and Dave Erickson—to host Beyond Social Media on BlogTalkRadio every Tuesday from 9:30 to 10 EDT.  It’s a fast-paced, irreverent look at the impact of social media on brands, consumers and society, and they discuss lots of shiny new objects.

BL was one of the early adopters of social media and she has taught me much of what I know. So I’m assuming this show is a winner.