Making simple edits to images in WordPress can save you time and enhance the look of your site. Learn how in our free video tutorial.
Make Image Adjustments in WordPress
It’s much more beneficial if you know a program like Photoshop and create your work there before uploading elsewhere. However, not everyone knows Photoshop, or in some cases, it might just be quicker and easier to make edits in WordPress.
We’re going to edit an image. I can do this by hovering over the Sidebar Menu, going into Media and Library.
I’m currently in thumbnail view; I’m going to switch to list view because it gives us a lot more information. It’s much more useful for us, especially if you have lots of images and want to do bulk actions.
I want to edit this image (see video). A couple of things about this: you’ll notice a variety of information. The image size itself, how long it’s going to take to load, and the physical dimensions of it, which you’ll need if you’re going to use it inside posts or on pages.
I can delete it and get it out of my Media Library. And a couple of other things: you’ll notice I can place a caption and/or a description for this picture, and certain themes will show captions or descriptions, so it’s a good idea to put it in there even if your current theme doesn’t. So if you switch to a different theme, you can then have your captions and descriptions show up without having to go back and redo all of your images.
You’ll also notice alternative text or alt text. If you need to have an accessible website—that means you’re required by law to be accessible—you’re going to have to put in alternative text for every single image that you do.
It’s a good idea to do it anyway because that’s the text that shows up before the image loads in. It might be important for you if legally you’re required to, because you have an audience that uses a non-graphical browser and this alternative text will be a replacement for those graphics that would typically show up in a graphical web browser like we’re using.
To edit the image, notice there’s this Edit Image button. I’m going to click on it.
And there are a couple of choices here that you’re familiar with if you use graphics programs. If not, let me talk about that now.
We have rotation clockwise and counter-clockwise. We also can flip along a horizontal or vertical axis. One of the other things we can do is crop. But you’ll notice, if you recognize the crop icon, it’s currently grayed out. I’ll talk about why that is in a moment.
It's important to note that people often will have to come in and scale the image down because it’s physically too large to use on the website. So I can put in the exact pixel dimensions that I want.
Under image crop, you’ll notice that the selection is also grayed out. But I can place an aspect ratio for the crop, so whatever I crop it to— whatever the physical dimensions end up being—it’s going to be in a 4:1 or 16:9 ratio, whatever I feel like having.
The reason why this is grayed out is because to create a crop area, I need to click and drag on the graphic itself.
I can readjust it. I can move it around. You’ll also notice that now the selection fields are filled in, so it tells me what the physical size is, and I can adjust it from here if I know the exact size that I want it to be.
I could crop this, but if I am going to make these changes, what am I making the changes to? All of the image size? Remember: WordPress creates multiple sized images when you bring them in for use. I can also change just the thumbnail or all of the sizes except the thumbnail.
Once I do that, if I were to crop this, I could hit save. And when I update that image, from that moment on, it is going to be changed entirely.
Go Beyond WordPress
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