Did you know that you can do the basic image editing in the WordPress backend? What do we mean by basic? Well simply cropping, rotating, scaling image sizes, and flipping the vertically or horizontally. When using WordPress for micro-blogging or when writing a quick post on the go, you will often find yourself limited to softwares. One example would be when you do not have your own computer and have to rely on public computers to publish a post. Why use a third-party image editor just to resize or crop your image when WordPress can do the job for you. In this article, we will show you how to use WordPress as a basic image editor that lets you crop, rotate, scale, and flip images.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
First thing you need to do is upload your image. You can add it while you are writing a post or by going to the Media » Add New tab.
Then once your image is uploaded, you just need to click on the little button that says Edit Image.
You will be taken to an screen that looks like this:
Just select the area you want to crop. Or click on the rotate / flipping icon. You can click to scale. You can even crop based on ratio. Pretty handy little feature right?
Have you used it before? We know we have.
Thanks for sharing! Just used the crop tool. Very handy!!
This does not work at all and is not in the least bit helpful. WordPress is the most horrid place to try to work with images. My featured images in my posts list pages are all cut – cropped out and only show a partial photo. I have tried all kinds of plugins that wp beginner has suggested and none of them work at all. I use the Awaken theme and the author will not respond to fix his worthless theme. The site that I am working on will have to be deleted because of wordpress being such a horrid cms to work with.
Cropping function doesn’t work anymore.
Any plugin that can do image cropping in media library?
I dont get that menu when i click edit image.. i am using bluehost.. i cant do anything to the images that are loading rotated 90 degrees.. fyi they not rotated when loaded to other sites.. this is specific to wordpress bluehost
There is no edit button on my end. Looks like I’m not the only one.
Does this work with the free version? I see NO options to edit photos, and all the ones I uploaded are rotated the wrong way.
Does nt work, anymore. It is just not there.
Hi,
when you scale an image from the media library, does it automatically reduce the quality of the image in every post/page where it was previously published or is it necessary to load it again in each single page to speed up the site?
Cheers
Anyone had the issue when you rotate an image you get the following. ‘Could not load the preview image. Please reload the page and try again.’??
I have GD and ImageMagick installed..
flip works ok just not rotate and crop.
I just discovered this yesterday. However, it seems to scale it on the fly as GTMetrix said that scaling images (that I had scaled using the tools above) was slowing down my page loading. I turned off Photon to be sure it wasn’t a cached image and also cleared my cache.
I must admit, the editing of photographs is not very clear. I thought I had it all sorted and when I published it the image was huge and you only saw our eyes. I understand that the scale image has to be adjusted, but come on guys, we are all not up to speed with stuff like that. We want idiot proof editing and there are plenty on the market that do such. please have a look at it or you will lose this customer very quickly
I’ve played with that edit feature, but cannot figure out how to get it to lock the aspect ratio. Let’s say I want a contributor to upload an image and then crop the part to show as the thumbnail before saving it. The numbers under “Image Crop -> Aspect Ratio” don’t seem to do anything and sometimes won’t let me enter any values. What are they for anyways?
This crop does not work when I try to save the crop as thumbnail only – I want to show a cropped image as a thumbnail in a gallery page, and then show the full version when launched in the lightbox. Is this possible
Thanks for the good post. So far I figured out what you have written. What I can’t manage is following:
My featured image is 960×332 to fit into home page slider. When I crop the picture I want to save cropped part as thumbnail so I can include it in the post. That is all managed by WP itself. What I didn’t mange is to change thumbnail from default crop to the crop I selected. No matter how many times I have cropped, saved, deleted or whatever is possible I can’t complete it. Could you please, explain it. Thank you!
I already use a few times this feature, but today I learned a few more tricks. Thanks a lot for the great tut …
Nice feature – never noticed it.
One thing to ponder: Does it save an updated version of the file which is then referenced (i.e. if the edited pic is in a post)?
I’d just be concerned that page load times could be increased if an inserted image in a WP post needs to be dynamically cropped/edited for correct display on each users page request.
@Roderick Dunne The final result replaces the existing image. It doesn’t need to perform those operations every time.
Well, it’s nice but if more functions can be provided for photo editing that would be amazing! However, it might consumes more web space or usage if it goes!
Crop has never worked for me. The Save button never works. It’s always grayed out. Actually in your post screenshot, the save button is also grayed out. Anyone else get crop to work?
@petebocken The save button is greyed out because the selection is still being made. Make your selection, then click the “Crop” button in the upper right to confirm the selection. Then it will perform the crop and you can save the result.
@Otto@petebocken
I had been confused by this, too, and though that crop either didn’t work on my installation or only worked for certain file types (ie jpg but not png). The process of selecting first and clicking “Crop” second seems opposite of other programs that I’ve used, such as Acrobat and Picasa. But, at least I know how to do it now!
Yeah, it’s ridiculous that I have google to find out how to do something that should be intuitive
@petebocken Sorry, I meant upper left, of course.
Only used it once but will probably have another go next time. Prefer using MS picture manager but nice tutorial. Pics look good
@tonyjalicea When I see WP, my first thought is Wordperfect. #youmightbeanoldnerdif
@dunfalach Well that’s a blast from the past.
@tonyjalicea Whoa. How did I miss that? I had no clue. You think you know someone. WordPress, she’s so sexy!
@Moe_NYC Indeed!
@wpbeginner how to upload 2 or more photos at once in a New Post? Pls reply.
@itravelwithlove Just drag two photos or as many you want at once in the drag drop media uploader.
@wpbeginner that’s what I do, but after that, I still need to upload it in my post one by one.
@itravelwithlove You mean insert it in your post one by one.. Yes because most of the time you insert images at different spots.
@itravelwithlove if you want to add all images one after another perhaps in a gallery format then u can do this: http://t.co/JOVHrsVQ
@wpbeginner I was able to try that too. Thank you for the help!☺