9 Ways To Create Contacts Pictures On a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you all the different ways you can set an image for your contacts on your Mac.

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So in the Contacts App you can set a picture for every contact. Originally you can set a photo that you have of that person or you can set it up to use some sort of standard icon. But over the years Apple has added more and more options. Now in macOS Monterey we have some really cool things that you can do with these pictures. 

Here I am in the Contacts App and if I go to Edit or just simply click right here I can immediately go to Edit the image used for that person. Look at all the options that I can choose from. So let's look at some old standards first. You can go to Photos here and choose something from the Photos App. You can even choose from your favorite photos or Shared Albums or any regular album. So you can quickly dig down to see what you can use. I can select a photo like this one and I can go over here, enlarge it, recenter it, and click Save. It will put it as the image for this contact. Of course if I'm doing this in iCloud, which you could see I am, then this is going to sync across to my iPhone, my iPad, my other Macs, and I'll see this image whenever that person calls, sends me a message, or I do something else that involves this contact. 

But there is so much more that you can do. Let's say you don't have a photo of them. Well, you can use camera here to take a photo right now. So if you have them with you you can take a picture. Now if you're doing this on your iPhone or iPad it's really easy to hold it up and take a picture of them. But you can do it using the camera on your Mac as well. Now if you don't have a picture of them you can create a picture, kind of, by going to Memoji. Memoji you would usually use for yourself to create kind of an avatar. Something that kind of looks like you that you can use in a variety of situations. But you could do this for other people as well. So you can click the Plus button here and then you can design using all of these different categories here a Memoji that looks like that person or maybe doesn't look like that person. You can create whatever you want. (Creating a Memoji.)

So you can see now I've put a lot of detail in for the Memoji. Click Done and then it will add it right there. Now I can zoom in a little bit here and position it if I want. I can also go to Pose and this will bring up some predefined poses here that I could use instead of just looking straight at the camera. 

Now if you're on the iPhone or iPad you actually can select the first one and then use your face actually to pose anything that you want. So mouth open/closed. Head tilted to the side. A smirk. Anything that you want you can put in here and create it as you like. Then you can go to Style and that just sets a background color there. That might help your viewing in Contacts if you have a color that kind of matches various groups of people or friends, or coworkers. That kind of thing.

Then you can click Save and now that will be used.

So if you like you can design one of these for everybody. Note that you don't have to use just one of these. You can also use one of the Animoji which are the little predefined animal faces right here. You can use those for people as well.

Now, here's another option. You can go to Emoji. Here you can pick one of these emoji right here, like sailboat. You can set a Style which is just the background color like before. Or you can click Plus and then choose any emoji you want. So you can go up here to the top and Search or you can select one that you want and it will use that instead. But, of course, that has hundreds and hundreds of emoji that you can use instead of an image. This really helps when it's a company contact. Not a person. Or maybe the person is somebody specific like maybe your plumber you can use an emoji that represents plumbing or handyman or something like that. So, for instance, for this one I can go in here. I can choose Emoji and click there and then search for something like this. Set a Style blue for water. Then I have something that works a little bit better than that generic one.

Now also here under Suggestions you still have the old icons. So you could choose one of those if there's one that you like. It will also show you recent things that you've setup here. What if you want to use a real custom image like a file. You can take any standard image file format. Drag and Drop it right onto this and then you could adjust it to fit in the circle as you like. Now you're using that instead. 

Finally, the last one is Monogram. So if you just want to use letters you can. You can pick a color set here and it will use it. The great thing is that you can customize it so you don't have to settle for initials or two letters of a company name, something like that. You can create whatever you want. You can even use some standard punctuation as well like that or that or something like that. 

Now you have a lot of options for creating these little images that go into Contacts. You may not want to create unique images for everybody. It takes a lot of time. But for at least the people you get messages from all the time. After all look at my Messages App here with just the gray circles with the letters in it. It would be a lot nicer if I took the time for at least these people to add in something more unique. So now you can see how it's a little easier to pick people out in the Messages App. The same system is present if you go into System Preferences and then Apple ID. Then you find your own icon here. You can click Edit and you find the same options here for creating the image that represents you. Of course in macOS Monterey if you choose a Memoji it will actually animate when you look at the login screen. So I'll choose this one right here to use for me. I'll Save. I'll go to the log screen and you can see there I am. It's actually looking at the cursor and as I enter in the password it pays attention.

So while creating custom images for each of your contacts and yourself is something you might have skipped in the past. I think now it's something that's useful to do and can also be fun.