So you’ve setup an account on emerging social media phenomenom Bluesky? Neat! There are a few ways to add some personality to your profile, and most are straight forward. In this blog post, we want to talk about one that’s a little less straight forward: setting up your header image in your profile.
You are probably already familiar with the banner picture from every social media ever. Setting it up in Bluesky is fairly simple. Open Profile and then click Edit Profile. You’ll see a camera icon that you can click to upload your banner.
Here’s where things get tricky. Bluesky doesn’t appear to have official guidelines for the banner image size. But don’t worry, we applied science (trial and error) to figure out how you get he best results.
In theory, the image size for the banner is 1500×500 pixels. But in reality, both the web version and the app(s) will display this banner differently. If you create a 1500×500 banner it might look okay in the app but might likely look not-as-awesome- in the web version.
The “trick” is to create a 1500×500 image where you leave a safe margin in both the top and bottom of the image. That safe margin is 75px for the top and 75px for the bottom, so 150px in total. If you respect these margins, your banner will look fine in both versions of Bluesky.
Example
To show you what we mean, let’s take a look at the banner that is used by yours truly. In the image below, you can see the 1500×500 banner. We have a create a 75px “safe zone” we are not using for the top and the bottom of the image. For the end result we’ve colored in the “safe margins”, but the image below gives you a better idea of the area you can work with.
This is the banner in the web version of Bluesky, the one which is the most difficult when you are not respecting the safety margins. As you can see the “margins” are gobbled up by the app on both sides of the banner.
In the web app, your header would look like the example below – don’t mind the lack of margin on the left and the right, that is the result of a screenshot-skill-issue.
How to create the image
Regardless of the tool you’re using to create your header, the easiest method may be to start from an image that is 1350px high and 500px wide. Design your banner inside those dimensions, and then use your tool to increase the image size to 1500px and center the visible header part. For the “safe margins” we recommend to use a background color.
We are hoping that this guide helps you to create an awesome header on Bluesky!