Frustrated at trying to figure out how to add a photo as a contact’s profile picture (i.e. how to set an avatar) for someone in Contacts on your Mac? Here’s how to easily add an image to a contact card when the picture is not in your photo stream, Faces, or the default images.

Let’s say that we want to add Jenny’s picture to her contact information in Contacts. You already have a contact created for her.

And you want to add her photo to her contact.

You would think that when you edit a contact in the Contacts app, and when you click on “Add photo”, that it would give you an obvious option to, you know, add a photo.

However, the options with which you are presented are Defaults, My Photo Stream, Faces, and Camera, none of which are the option to simply add an image that you have on your computer.

We can only imagine that this is because the good folks at Apple assume that you are a lemming, and will be using their Photo Stream or Faces function, like all of the other good Apple lemmings. (Make no mistake, we are Apple fanbois and fangurls here, but we still think for ourselves when it comes to computing and technology.)

Fortunately, the hard-to-find solution is actually easy to do.

Open Contacts to the contact to which you want to add the image. You don’t even have to click on “Edit”.

Now, find the image that you want to add as the profile picture for this contact.

Now, drag the image to the contact picture circle.

Click “Done” when you are done, and that’s all there is to it.

Now the picture that you have assigned to your contact will show up everywhere that it should.

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