SharePoint 2010: Where do my User Profile Photos Go?

I got an email the other day asking “where are the User Profile Pictures Stored?”

All the photos are stored in a picture library in the root of the My Sites called User Photos.  They are then stored in a folder called Profile Pictures.

Navigate to your profile home page, delete default.aspx and type in ‘/user photos/’  (for example http://sp2010/my/user photos/).  This will take you to the root and then navigate to the folder Profile Pictures.

You will notice there are 3 photos for each user.

Each photo is resized to fit into either 144 x 144, 96 x 96 and 32 x 32.  If the photo you uploaded is a rectangle it will resize so one side is 144 pixels and the other is shorter.  For example the screen shot above has George Clooney and his photo sizes are 102 x 144, 68 x 96 and 23 x 32.

Each photo is also named with a ‘_LThumb’ for the large 144 x 144 photo, ‘_MThumb’ for the medium 96 x 96 photo and ‘_SThumb’ for the 32 x 32 photo.