Creating a Custom Twitter Background (or at least what worked for me)

by hankinslawrenceimages | May 14, 2010 | On the Web

Creating a custom twitter background has been on my to-do list for a very long time. After all – I’m a photographer and I use twitter and photoshop all the time – how hard could it be? After a few unsuccessful attempts a while back the custom twitter background went on my someday/maybe list. This week – while attending Alyson Stanfield’s I”d Rather Be in The Studio: No Excuses Art Marketing Workshop – I decided to give it another try when I got home.

I did a quick google search and came up with a couple of webposts with info on size, placement etc. The articles are How to Create A Custom Twitter Background and Twitter Background Guidelines. The info in the articles gave me a place to start experimenting with my own background.

Here’s what my new background looks like

Here’s how I created it

1. Opened a new document in Photoshop – 2048 pixels wide X 1000 pixels high – white background
2. Created a 250 pixel wide X 400 pixel tall document and added in my logo and text layers with my name & websites
3. Created a 250 pixel wide X 600 pixel tall document and copied in three of my flower photos
4. Copied the the logo document and flower pictures into the background document. I made sure to leave some blank space to the left – just in case
5. Flattened the layers
6. Converted to sRGB colorspace (I’m a photographer – I want my colors to look right online 🙂 )
7. Converted to 8 bit
8. Saved as JPG – file needs to be 800K or less.

Then came the fun of uploading my new background to Twitter. I tried repeatedly last night and this morning to upload it using Firefox. Every time I tried I got the Fail Whale. So I tried using Internet Explorer – and it uploaded without a problem. No clue why it worked with Explorer when it wouldn’t work with Firefox – but it did.

How to upload the new background

1. Go to your twitter account – click on settings in the top menu bar
2. From the settings page – click on the Design tab
3. Click on Change Background Image
4. Enter the filename and location on your computer in the browse box
5. Click on save changes
6. Assuming it uploads – take a look – and adjust as necessary.

You can see my new Twitter Background on my Twitter Profile – @PattyHankins

Hope this helps

And by the way – if you are an artist – I really recommend that you subscribe to Alyson Stanfield’s Art Marketing Newsletter and her ArtBizBlog.  Like Alyson’s book, I’d Rather Be in the Studio: The Artist’s No-Excuses Guide to Self Promotion, her newsletter and blog are full of concrete, easy to implement ideas and techniques to help you promote your art.