Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [6]
Google+ also suggests uploading a photo to “Help your friends recognize you.” While you don’t have to add a photo, it’s a good idea because it lets people know they’ve found you and not someone else who shares your name. That way, you’ll spare your friends from awkward “Do I know you?” conversations with strangers. If you’re a Google enthusiast or veteran of Google Buzz (a predecessor of Google+ that wasn’t very well received), you might already see an image on this first sign-up page. If not, or if you’d like to use a different photo, click the “Add photo” link or the silhouette next to it, and you’ll be prompted to pick a photo.
If you’re on your own computer and have a few pictures of yourself that you like, click the “Select a photo from your computer” button. In the file-selection box that appears, find the image you want to use (it can be a JPEG, GIF, or PNG file) and double-click it. Don’t worry if it’s not cropped properly, or even if it could look a bit better—you’ll be able to make those edits right in Google+, without needing any other software, as explained in a moment.
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If you use Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or certain other browsers besides Internet Explorer, the “Select profile photo” dialog box gives you the option of selecting a photo by dragging instead. The process is just like moving a file on your computer with the mouse: Line up your web browser so you can see the image file you want (whether it’s saved on your desktop or you’ve located it in a file-viewing program like Windows Explorer, for example) and then simply drag the file into the dotted-line box within the “Select profile photo” dialog box. (If you use IE, you won’t see this dotted-line box.)
If you use Google’s Picasa Web Albums to store photos, you can click “Your photos” on the left-hand side of the “Select profile photo” dialog box and then pick a photo from your gallery. The other, less convenient options listed there are “Photos of you,” which tells Google+ to try to find photos in which you’ve already been tagged (Tagging Photos)—an unlikely occurrence at this early stage—and “From your phone,” which leads you through installing Google+ on your smart-phone. That’s quite a lot of work at this stage, though, and since you can change this photo at any time, just pick something fairly decent and upload it.
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If you have a camera built into your computer and use Firefox, Chrome, or Safari as your web browser, you might see a “Web camera” option on the left of the picture-choosing box. If you like, go ahead and try taking a headshot using your webcam, but it can be tough to get a decently lit shot that shows your best side.
Once you choose a photo, Google+ displays controls that let you crop and rotate the image right in your web browser. Drag the four little white boxes to select the part of the image you want to use as your profile photo. You generally want to choose just your face, or perhaps your head and shoulders, so that your friends and acquaintances will be able to pick you out even if they’re looking at a tiny version of your profile photo. Far-off shots of your handstands at the beach won’t quite do (man, you really had a time in St. Lucia, didn’t you?). If you need to rotate the photo, click the icons to the right of the image to spin it left or right.
Need to do some serious tweaking to your photo? Click Creative Kit to edit it with a slightly customized version of Picnik, an image-editing program from Google that runs in your browser. When you do, the dialog box changes to include tools that let you adjust your photo in all kinds of ways. The four tabs at the top left let you choose from Basic Edits (like adjusting