At present, the method for setting the new cover photo is a bit complex... to put it politely.  The method used to set the profile photo is equally strange.

I propose something different, that is more straightforward, easy to understand, and really shouldn't be that difficult to implement.  I propose adding a drop down menu to every single photo album thumbnail, in every single album... the exact same menu, that is.  Once the menu functionality is coded, you place it on each thumbnail via a template key or similar.

I set up a demo to illustrate the concept.  The demo does nothing more than help visualize the menu.  Just hover on the little blue menu icon in the upper right corner of the thumb.  In a real implementation, clicking on an item in the drop down list would perform that particular action.... maybe with a confirmation popup... maybe not.

Demo: http://houstonlively.com/demo/photoThumbMenu/index.html

I've added a few possible actions to include on this menu.. perhaps someone can add to them.

Comments?  Opinions?

 Excellent idea!

Great. But may be annoying if shown 24/7 on every pic. Transparent+Mouse over is an option?

I would say using an implementation like that one could get rid of most of the action block and add it in the thumb menu...

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You mean like this:http://houstonlively.com/demo/photoThumbMenu/index2.html

Just to be clear. I'm only suggesting doing this for photo album thumbs... nowhere else.

Great.. This will work when you are browsing pictures and suddenly decide to put a certain picture as profile or cover picture but when you are on profile you will have to repeat the process we are doing now. For that either all the changes should be made in a popup ( you can upload or select picture from existing album and when to popup close you land on profile with the new picture) or just land the user on profile when they submit a new picture the way we are doing right now in 7.2.

 That's about as clear as mud.

Like this

 You're missing the point.  I'm suggesting that various settings be separated from photo album management, uploading, etc.

Anyway, I see Alex entered a ticket on simplifying cover photo selection. We'll see what they come up with. They'd probably never do something like this anyway,

 i thought we were talking about

Setting Cover, Avatar, or Profile Photo proposal

not about photo album management, obviously that need a different solution :)

moonsoon2u I think you are missing the point. We are talking about setting cover, avatar, and/or profile photos. 

We are talking about separating these functions from album management into their own "photo management" area - in effect.

So its not about album management, its about the separation thereof.

Also not sure why such a little menu couldn't be displayed on mouse-over no matter what page of the site you are on. If there is a photo - have the option to set it as cover, avatar, or profile photo (I offered a bit more as I like those style menu's.... they are clutter free thus adding more room on the pages for other things). 

some thing like twitter without any link to any album?

I think the ticket is closed but on SVN version i found no changes in the profile or cover picture uploading process.

 All that changeset does is bypass the initial popup... it's a start.

 It's a start, indeed. We don't want to make too many big changes at this stage. Really time to fix and release. We do, however, understand that this procedure must be much ore simple and clear, so we'll get to improve it further as soon as possible.