WordPress provides an array of inbuilt features. You don’t always need a plugin to do small stuffs. Image editing in WordPress is one such thing. WordPress comes loaded with basic image editing system. If you don’t want to use any image processing software externally or are away from your home/office, WordPress’ internal Image Editing tools comes handy. You can edit your images while uploading on your website or can edit images already available in the image library.
Some basic Image editing you can do on WordPress internally are :
- Resize/Scale
- Crop
- Rotate
- Mirroring / Flip – Both Horizontal & Vertical
- Aspect Ratio
- Thumbnail size option
- Undo/Redo of Image Editing Operation
In this post we will see how to use do basic image editing in WordPress and make our images more compatible and appropriate. We will go through all the above said operation one by one and demonstrate it with respective figures :
Section for Image Editing in WordPress Admin Panel :
To reach to the section where you can edit an image follow :
- In WordPress admin panel go to Media section
- In media click on Library
- Once library is open you can see all the images in it
- Click on the image you want to edit
- Below the image click on the Edit Image Button
A. Now you will see the edit options
Image Editing Operation you can do in WordPress Admin Panel :
1. Image Resize/Scaling in WordPress Image Editing Panel
Image resizing/scaling is one operation which we need very frequently to place an image in the appropriate space. WordPress Image editing panel provides a way to do this quite easily and in a very straight forward way.
If you see the image above, on the right top corner you can notice Scale Image section. In that section you have option to enter new dimensions. You can enter the new dimension in it and press scale. Your selected image will become of that size automatically. Then you can save it. Done !
2. Image Cropping in WordPress Image Editing Panel
You usually need to crop an image to remove the unwanted part of it or the edges. In WordPress image editing panel you can do it.
You see on the top left corner of the image editing panel. Just above the image you see a few buttons. The first one of them is for Crop operation. Click on that button and you will activate the cropping operation and you will see a dotted border around the image and dots on the corner. See the following image:
You can now drag in any of the points on the corners or sides to crop the image as you desire and save the image.
Alternatively you can also do it using the Image Crop section on the left side. There you can either enter the Aspect ratio or the part of image you want to select in pixels. But as you can see doing it by entering number is difficult so I will advise you to use the drag method explained above.
3. Rotating Image inWordpress Image Editing Panel
From the buttons just above the image the second and third are for rotating the image Anti-Clockwise and Clockwise respectively. Clicking on the second button image will be rotated anti-clockwise while clicking on the third button will rotate the image in clockwise direction. Save the image once you get the desired orientation. For example image will look like below after a anti-clockwise operation:
4. Mirroring/Flipping of Image inWordpress Image Editing Panel
The 4th and 5th button on the top of the image are for mirroring or flipping the image vertically and horizontally respectively. Click the 4th button to flip the image vertically and 5th to flip the image horizontally. Save the image once you get the desired stuff. For example, image will look like below after a vertical flip:
5. Aspect Ratio Adjustment in WordPress Image Editing Panel
Here I would like to spend few words to explain what is Aspect Ration of an Image – Aspect ration is the ratio of Height & Width of an image. If you change it image will automatically reshaped by getting cropped to maintain the given aspect ratio.
If you are reading from the beginning you have seen in the same figure in cropping section. In the Image Crop section you have the option to change the aspect ratio.
6. Thumbnail Size Option in WordPress Image Editing Panel
You can edit the image while preserving the thumbnail. For example, you may wish to have a square thumbnail that displays just a section of the image.
7. Undo Image Edit in WordPress Image Editing Panel
What if we made a wrong operation. We have options to Undo/Redo these operations. Just on the top of the image you have the last 2 buttons for the undo and redo operations.
I believe this article helped you to understand how to edit images in WordPress. Please ask in comments if you have any queries, I will be happy to help you out with it.
