In Ubuntu 11.10, I can set my profile picture through the User Accounts settings panel. I can select an existing picture and it will help me crop that picture to look nice.
The final product is not stored in the same ~/.face file used in Gnome 2. In fact, I don't know where it is stored and I would love to know! Any ideas?
Pictures are stored in the folder /var/lib/AccountsService/icons/[user name]
The [user name] is of type image/png format with a size of 96x96 pixels
Under the folder /var/lib/AccountsService/user you have a similar file [user name] that is a .desktop format - for example
[User]
Language=en_GB
XSession=ubuntu
Icon=/var/lib/AccountsService/icons/dad
The Icon= is not created unless you assign a picture in Users and Accounts
If you assign one of the stock pictures the file will contain - for example
[User]
Language=en_GB
XSession=ubuntu
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/faces/soccerball.png
Thus - as you can see - just create an Icon= entry in /var/lib/AccountsService/user/[user name] to point to your PNG file or overwrite the icon in the similarly named /var/lib/AccountsService/icons folder
For anyone using Ubuntu 12.04 the webcam picture taken during install (if not changed) is simply stored here:
/home/[UserName]/.face
It is stored as a .png file. Go to your View > Show Hidden Files options to see it and access it.
If there is no global icon for the user, GDM will look in the user's $HOME directory for the image file. GDM will first look for the user's face image in ~/.face. If not found, it will try ~/.face.icon. If still not found, it will use the value defined for "face/picture=" in the ~/.gnome2/gdm file.
source http://library.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/overview.html.en#facebrowser
