How to make your profile picture look professional

Recently it's come to my notice that whenever I see a picture of somebody
that is self taken, they always seem to take in their bathrooms in front of the mirror.
I honestly find this to be a very poor choice upon the person taking the picture.

Besides, I find the bathroom to be more of a personal place.
It's where you shower, poop, and get ready for your day.
So when a person takes a self picture of them in their bathroom to me it seems almost as if they
are shouting "Hey world! come read my diary full of personal things!"

I think it would be much better (and cooler) if people just edited out the background.
I mean really, it's not all that hard to do. Not to mention it just looks so much better.
For example look at my Facebook picture.

Editing out the background took only about ten minutes of my time to do.

It's not very difficult at all to accomplish.

So not only do you get a cooler looking picture, people also won't have to look your your

place of ultimate privacy as well. And keeps you at the center of the pictures attention which is the most important aspect.

When editing your BG (background) DO NOT USE MS PAINT! I mean you can, but 

it will not look as good. If you do not have Photoshop, or any other image editor and do not wish

to pay money for it, I would highly suggest GIMP [http://www.gimp.org/] It has all the features

of Photoshop, but is completely 100% free, and is opensource. Meaning that it's users create even more

features for the program.  

When editing your BG create a new transparent layer and place it below your picture.

Then select the original layer (the layer with your picture on it.)

Now take the outline or select tool which your editor uses and outline outline everything that IS NOT your physical body, then hit the delete button on your keyboard. If done correctly your entire background will

be gone, and your body will be the only thing in view.

Now select your bottom layer and fill it in with something else, I would suggest a nice pattern or gradient.

For a nice touch (and this is just what I would do personally) put a drop shadow or some nice lighting 

effects on the layer with your body. Once done just merge your layers into single image then save it.

Congratulations you now have a cooler profile picture of yourself than you had ten minutes ago!