Google+ offered the ability to create business pages somewhat recently and I finally got around to creating Freedman Consulting’s page a little while ago. Unfortunately, I experienced a substantial amount of frustration trying to set the profile picture. The process should have been easy enough, I didn’t have any trouble when I set up my personal Google+ account, but for whatever reason, no matter what I tried, the Freedman Consulting logo would resize every time so all I could get Google+ to show would be a big F.
I looked around and found that the Google+ profile picture should be 202×202 pixels. I resized the logo to that, no go. I even resized the logo to 10×10 pixels just to see what would happen, no go. Google still resized the logo so that all I could use was the F. As in Frustration! Or…well you know.
A little more searching showed me that I was not the only person to experience this problem. For some reason Google+ insists on resizing certain images. My guess is that it has something to do with the large amount of white in our Logo. I sent feedback to Google about the problem, but that didn’t solve my profile picture issue. What to do?
The Solution
After some thought, I decided on something I thought would work. Fortunately it did.
1. I resized the logo to 202×202 pixels.
2. I created an empty image, and in that image I put a white background that was 400×400. (You should use whatever color blends in for your image.)
3. Then I dragged the resized logo into the middle of the white image and saved it.
4. I uploaded the combined image to Google+ and sure enough, I was able to resize my image properly and use the Freedman Consulting logo. Since the white blended in perfectly, no one could see what I had done.
Don’t forget to delete your old profile pictures, otherwise Google+ rotates the pictures.
Update:
Google changes the size periodically. Adjust the sizes accordingly.