How To Guide for Hi-Res Contact Photos on Pre

[NeoteriX]

Contacts Tutorial



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This tutorial is designed to demonstrate how to exercise the most control over (and generate the best quality with) setting a contact photo on the Palm Pre. Unfortuantely, there was very little information about how the Pre handled contact photos and many people were disappointed with the blurry, low-resolution photos on their Pre. However, after experimenting a little, I think I've figured out the best way to control your contact photo.

In summary, the Pre appears to default to a low or high resolution contact mode. The trick is a 320 pixel width; the same as the Pre's horizontal resolution. Any photo below this threshold will force the Pre to resample the photo into its low resolution mode. Photos above this threshold will default to the high-resolution mode, but require the user to crop the photo.

This tutorial assumes access to a general image editing software. For this I used GIMP, a high quality open-source/freeware program. ( GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program ) Before proceeding with the tutorial, one should be comfortable with cropping and resizing(scaling). This tutorial also assumes access to and familiarity with connecting your Palm to your PC via USB.

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Step 1: Preparation

You'll want to identify a contact and a suitable photo. For reasons explained below, you'll a) want to select a photo with a high enough resolution for you to get at minimum a clean 320x320 pixel crop (personally, I prefer cropping an even higher resolution, and then downscaling for the best quality); and b) want to ensure that there is a margin of space around the head of the contact subject.

Here, I'll be setting up a contact for my good friend, Shia LeBeouf (exhibit A), and I've decided upon this photo of him and Megan Fox. Exhibit B.

exhibit A:


exhibit B:

Note: smaller size than actually used. Credit, The Superficial


Step 2: Crop and Resize/Scale

You'll want to crop a clean square of your subject (set your crop tool to a 1:1 ratio to help). The square should be 320x320 or greater, the subject's head should be roughly centered, and there should be a reasonable amount of space around the subject's head (exhibit D). We will soon see why. If your crop is greater than 320x320, downscale to that size after cropping. Exhibit C. This is also the time to do any touching up, levels, etc. to your photo. Be sure to save in a compatible image format, JPEG is best.

exhibit C:


exhibit D:



Step 3: File Transfer

Connect your Pre to your PC via USB, and select the "USB Drive" option. Open the Pre in explorer and either copy your contact photo into the "downloads" folder, or feel free to make a new folder "contacts" or what have you. Here, my folder will be called "Tutorial." Safely disconnect the Pre using "Safely Remove Hardware", and then disconnect the Pre from the USB cable; the Pre will shortly return to WebOS.

Alternatively (if you cannot sync your Pre with your PC), you can email yourself the contact photo, and then download it to your Pre. The photo will be in the "downloads" folder.


Step 4: Assign Photo to Contact

Launch the "Photos" App. Exhibit E. Find the folder where your contact photo resides; here Shia is in "Tutorial." Bring up the contact photo. Exhibit F. Tap the upper-left corner of the screen to bring up the photo options menu, and select "Assign to contact." Exhibit G. If the contact photo is perfectly 320x320, the photo should fit in the framing/crop window perfectly. Tap "Set to Contact." Exhibit H. Again if the contact photo is 320x320, the Pre will respond with "Contact picture set." If the photo's width is less than 320 pixels, the Pre will respond with "Assign to contact failed." Exhibits I and J.

exhibit F:


exhibit G:


exhibit H:


exhibits I and J:



Step 5: Confirm Contact Photo Addition

Give your contact a quick call to confirm that their photo was assigned correctly. The phone app should display the photo in a large and high-resolution format. Do note that the phone app does cut off a part of the square photo. The exposed area is roughly 220 x 320 pixels. The crop isn't vertically symmetrical, it roughly 35 pixels tall at the top, and 65 pixels at the bottom. Exhibits K and L. If you got a notification that your "Assign to contact failed" because your photo was below 320 pixels wide, the photo will appear like exhibit M.

exhibits K and L:


exhibit M:

[NeoteriX]

Reserved.

[justjill3]

What a pleasant way to start my Pre morning! I was surprised to see the degradation of some of my pics. Hadn't noticed until recently. Now I understand. Well done, NeoteriX!

[jimhuff]

Frankly, I'm not even sure if I care about this, but I really appreciate such a positive contribution to this forum.

[kfra315]

Great write-up. A little of topic but do you really have Shia LaBeouf's number? I really need to get in touch with the AutoBots and I hear he's got some connections.

[Mpre]

Cool thanks!


To the admins....there should be a sub forum for all Pre's DIY threads. Don't like to search for them.

[neodorian]

Nice writeup! Still, next time you talk to that kid please ask him to stop making movies.

[dcigary]

I'm currently fighting with trying to have it all - reasonable looking Outlook contact photos along with reasonable looking Pre contact photos. My problem is two-fold - Outlook only supports 72x72 pictures, and Google only supports 96x96, and if they are any bigger they get really munged up by the transfer to Google (using gSyncit) and by the time they get to the phone they look like total crap. Any suggestions there? What happens if I update my phone contacts to have a 320x320 photo and the contacts sync up to Google? This is all so very frustrating!

[Delta-9]

Explain to me why this tutortial is not focused on adding Megan Fox as a contact to my phone.

[donald.aleshire]

does this work with facebook photo contacts as well?

[robot123]

Originally Posted by dcigary

I'm currently fighting with trying to have it all - reasonable looking Outlook contact photos along with reasonable looking Pre contact photos. My problem is two-fold - Outlook only supports 72x72 pictures, and Google only supports 96x96, and if they are any bigger they get really munged up by the transfer to Google (using gSyncit) and by the time they get to the phone they look like total crap. Any suggestions there? What happens if I update my phone contacts to have a 320x320 photo and the contacts sync up to Google? This is all so very frustrating!

I would imagine that the ideal size would be 288x288 then? That is the lowest common multiple of both 72 and 96....

[Huncher]

[ronlongo]

Thanks for the great tip

[dcigary]

While doing some research, I came across an interesting tidbit. When you have a contact that has other linked profiles, the "default profile" is the only one that is searched when using global search. Wow. I've been assigning the default profile based on which picture I wanted to use, which now might not have been such a good idea as it might limit what I pick up in global search. I guess there's no way to force a profile to have a specific photo after it's been linked, huh? Grrr.

[ION-q]

Nice!

But can you re-write it using Megan's butt as the contact photo?

[dcigary]

Yup, as I suspected, as soon as you sync up to Google and then to Outlook, it mungs the photo up in Outlook. (sigh) Who said Synergy was going to be easy again?

[algee650]

Thanks for sharing! Funny thing I just updated a friends pic last night.

The contacts (and pics) imported from Facebook actually fill up my screen more so than just assigning a pic from my phone.

Any ideas why?

[NeoteriX]

Originally Posted by dcigary

I'm currently fighting with trying to have it all - reasonable looking Outlook contact photos along with reasonable looking Pre contact photos. My problem is two-fold - Outlook only supports 72x72 pictures, and Google only supports 96x96, and if they are any bigger they get really munged up by the transfer to Google (using gSyncit) and by the time they get to the phone they look like total crap. Any suggestions there? What happens if I update my phone contacts to have a 320x320 photo and the contacts sync up to Google? This is all so very frustrating!

Originally Posted by dcigary

Yup, as I suspected, as soon as you sync up to Google and then to Outlook, it mungs the photo up in Outlook. (sigh) Who said Synergy was going to be easy again?

I understand how you feel; I previously had the Motorola Q9c on Windows Mobile syncing my contacts with Outlook. I spent a good several hours creating contact photos for my closest family and friends at 96x72 (check your outlook compatibility, I'm pretty sure outlook can handle up to 96 pixels vertically). Switching to the Pre, I transferred all of my Outlook contacts to GMail (and ditched Outlook) and pondered re-doing my contact photos in 96x96, but was unsatisfied with the quality of the google contact photos on my Pre. Now it's 320x320.



The biggest downside to this is what you've identified; when syncing with Gmail/Google the contact picture gets very ugly. I suppose it's the reality of trying to get the same photo in three significantly different resolutions, although I'm sure if I had control of the resampling process, I could make things look much better.

Ultimately, I decided that I'd rather have nice, clear photos on my Pre more than on my Google Contacts, but we shall see...

Originally Posted by robot123

I would imagine that the ideal size would be 288x288 then? That is the lowest common multiple of both 72 and 96....

Wouldn't work, must be at least 320x320. You could try a higher common multiple, but I'm betting against it working. I'll try a little later though...

Originally Posted by algee650

Thanks for sharing! Funny thing I just updated a friends pic last night.

The contacts (and pics) imported from Facebook actually fill up my screen more so than just assigning a pic from my phone.

Any ideas why?

Take a screen shot of your Pre (Orange + ^ + P) and show us?

[algee650]

No worries. Figured it out. The pic I uploaded last night wasn't quite 320x320. I cropped it again just now and it's all good (my friend is wondering why the heck I keep calling him...haha).

Thanks NeoteriX.

[dcigary]

Originally Posted by NeoteriX

Ultimately, I decided that I'd rather have nice, clear photos on my Pre more than on my Google Contacts, but we shall see...

I just noticed that gSyncit has the option of NOT syncing contact photos, so I guess that's what I'm going to do - have photos separate in Outlook and the Pre. I agree, the higher res photos do look a LOT better on the Pre than grainy squished ones!