WordPress comes with some pretty neat tools to manage and edit images. Sadly often beginners are not aware of these WordPress image editing features. If you ever had a question about WordPress images, then you’re in luck. In this article, we will cover the most common image issues in WordPress and how to fix them.
Since this is a detailed article, here is the list of image related issues that we will cover this article.
- How to Upload Images in WordPress?
- How to Align Image to the Left or Right in WordPress?
- How to Add Caption below Images?
- How to Display Photos in Columns and Rows?
- Create Beautiful Responsive Image Galleries in WordPress
- How to Fix Missing Post Thumbnails / Featured Image?
- How to Fix Featured Image Appearing Twice Issue?
- Image too Big? How to Crop Images in WordPress?
- How to Add a Header Image in WordPress?
- How to Add a Background Image in WordPress?
- How to Find Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts?
- How to Tag Images in WordPress?
- How to Import External Images in WordPress?
- How to Require Featured Image for Posts in WordPress?
- How to Set a Default Featured Image in WordPress?
- How to Remove the Default Image Link in WordPress?
Let’s start with the most obvious one.
1. How to Upload images in WordPress?
Image uploads in WordPress are handled by the Media uploader.
You can insert an image in your content by clicking on the ‘Add Media’ button in post or page edit screen.
You can also directly upload images to ‘Media’ and use them later in a post or a page.
You will need to visit Media » Add New page to upload your image(s). Simply click on the select file buttons and then select the images from your computer that you want to upload.
2. How to Align Image to the Left or Right in WordPress?
You may have noticed how some popular blogs use images with text wrapped around them. This is done by using the align feature.
You can choose image alignment when uploading an image and before inserting it into your post.
Alternately, you can also use the align buttons using the image toolbar right inside post editor.
Click on the image to select it, and then click on the align buttons to adjust the alignment.
3. How to Add Caption below Images?
WordPress allows you to easily add caption for images. After you upload an image, WordPress media uploader allows you to provide image title, description, and caption.
You can also add captions to existing images by editing the image.
4. How to Display Photos in Columns and Rows?
Often users ask us how to neatly display photos in columns and rows.
Let’s say you want to share photos of a birthday party, or vacation photos. You can add them one by one into a post, but this will look like a lengthy list of images.
The better way to group your photos is by creating image galleries.
Simply upload your images when editing a post or page.
In the media uploader select the images you want to show and click on the ‘Create Gallery’ link in the left column.
Next, you need to click on the ‘Add new gallery’ button at the bottom right corner of the media uploader.
WordPress will now show you gallery settings.
You can choose how to link to an image, number of columns, size of gallery images, etc.
Once you are done, click on the ‘Insert Gallery’ button to finish.
For more detailed instructions see our guide on how to create an image gallery in WordPress.
5. Create Beautiful Responsive Image Galleries in WordPress
You will notice that the default WordPress image galleries don’t look so great on mobile. They are also not very easy to browse.
If you often upload images and photographs to your WordPress site, then you will need a proper WordPress photo gallery plugin.
We recommend using Envira Gallery. It allows you to easily create beautiful and fully mobile friendly image galleries on your WordPress site.
The best part is that it adds additional functionality like Albums, gallery templates, social sharing abilities, slideshows, watermarking, pagination, password protection, tagging, fullscreen view, and much more.
See our guide on how to easily create responsive WordPress image galleries with Envira for full instructions.
6. How to Fix Missing Post Thumbnails / Featured Image?
Most WordPress themes allow you to prominently display a featured image with your articles. Here is how to set a featured image in WordPress to avoid missing thumbnails.
If you do not see a featured image meta box in your post edit area, then click on Screen Options button on the top right corner of the screen and check the featured image check box.
Now, you can click on ‘Set Featured Image’ link to upload your post thumbnail.
After uploading the image, you need to click on the Set Featured Image button.
You will be able to see your post thumbnail in the featured image meta box like this:
For more details, see our guide on how to add featured image or post thumbnail in WordPress.
7. How to Fix Featured Image Appearing Twice Issue?
Inserting featured image inside post editor is a common mistake made by beginners.
Once you set a featured image, you don’t need to insert it into the post editor along with your post content.
Doing so, will make your featured image appear twice. Once as the featured image, and once as an image inside the post.
You can add other images in your post, but your featured image goes in the featured image box.
For more details, see our guide on how to fix featured image appearing twice in WordPress posts.
8. Image too Big? How to Crop Images in WordPress?
When you are uploading images from your phone or camera they are usually too big.
WordPress automatically creates small, medium, and large image sizes for your original upload. But sometimes you may need to crop the image in a different size.
WordPress is no Photoshop, but it comes with some basic image editing features like scale, crop, flip and rotate images.
Go to Media » Add New and upload your image. After uploading the image, you will see an Edit link next to the uploaded image.
Clicking on it will open the Edit Media screen where you will see an Edit Image button right below the image. This will open the WordPress image editor.
On the image editor screen, you will see buttons to perform some basic image editing tasks such as cropping, rotating, resizing, etc.
For more detailed instructions see our guide on how to crop, rotate, scale, and flip images in WordPress.
9. How to Add a Header Image in WordPress?
A header image in WordPress is a theme feature. Many WordPress free and premium themes comes with support for header image.
You can upload your own custom header image from the Appearance » Customize. WordPress will let you know the size requirements for the header image.
If you upload an image of the exact size, then it will be used as is. However, if you upload an image of a larger or different size, then you will be prompted to crop the image to fit the header image size.
10. How to Add a Background Image in WordPress?
Just like the custom header image, custom background image is also a WordPress theme feature. Many WordPress themes come with support for custom background images.
Visit Appearance » Customize to launch the theme customizer. If you can see the Background Image option, then your theme has support for custom backgrounds.
Simply upload an image from your computer or choose one from the media library. Once you have chosen the image you will be able to see the preview and other background image options.
You can tile the image, make it a fixed background, or allow it to be scrolled. Save your changes and preview your website.
11. How to Find Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts?
Images can make your articles stand out. However, you must respect copyrights of other people and try to find images that you are legally allowed to use.
We are often asked by our readers about how to find best royalty free images to use in their posts?
There are many websites where you can find free images to use. However, you will soon notice that images on those sites look overused and generic.
See our list of the best sources for free public domain and CC0-licensed images on the internet.
12. How to Tag Images in WordPress?
If you run a photography blog, then you will notice that WordPress does not allow you to sort photos and images.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could add tags to your images, so that you and your users can easily browse them?
Luckily, there are some great plugins that allow you to do just that.
For a photography related blog, the best option is to use Envira Gallery’s Tags addon.
Envira Gallery allows you to create beautiful, mobile-ready, photo galleries in WordPress. Using tags, your users can easily filter and sort photos without even reloading a page.
If you are not using Envira Gallery, then you can try WP MediaTagger plugin.
13. How to Import External Images in WordPress?
This question often comes up when you are migrating your site to WordPress. Some images on your website may still be pointing to older location.
Specially users importing blogs from Blogger, Squarespace, or WordPress.com may face this problem.
While the images on your site may appear correctly, they are still loading from external source. To solve this issue, all you need to do is install and activate Import External Images plugin.
It will check your posts for external images and show all of them. You can then simply import all those images with the click of a button.
For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to import external images in WordPress.
14. How to Require Featured Image for Posts in WordPress?
When running a multi-author site in WordPress, some of your authors may not be familiar with the featured image functionality.
In this case, you may want to remind yourself or your users to upload a featured image whenever they are submitting a post in WordPress.
You can do this by installing and activating the Require Featured Image plugin.
Once activated, the plugin will display a notification box in the post edit area, informing users that this post requires a featured image.
You and your users will be able to save posts as drafts, but you cannot publish the post until you add a featured image.
See our article on how to require featured images for posts in WordPress for more instructions.
15. How to Set a Default Featured Image in WordPress?
Finding the perfect featured image for every post or article is a tough task. Sometimes you may not want to add a featured image to a post, but your theme may look awkward without a featured image.
This is where a default featured image can come in handy. A default featured image is used when an article does not have a featured image of its own.
You can set a default fallback image by manually adding code in your theme’s functions.php file or you can set default featured image plugin.
Either way, you will have a branded fall back image, that does not look bad and fits nicely on your site.
16. How to Remove the Default Image Link in WordPress?
WordPress creates multiple copies of an image upload in different sizes. By default it adds a link to the original image file.
You can set default link to ‘none’ to remove the link, but doing it manually each time you upload an image is a little annoying.
You can stop WordPress from adding a link by adding this code in your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.
function wpb_imagelink_setup() {
$image_set = get_option( 'image_default_link_type' );
if ($image_set !== 'none') {
update_option('image_default_link_type', 'none');
}
}
add_action('admin_init', 'wpb_imagelink_setup', 10);
For more details, see our guide on how to automatically remove default image links in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you fix some of the most common image issues in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m having issues with my custom header. Ive added it to my blog and it looks perfectly fine on a desktop and tablet, but it doesn’t fit properly on a mobile. its really zoomed in and cut off. Do you have any tips/advice on how to fix this? thanks!
When I post my blog on FaceBook or Twitter, my featured image doesn’t appear; only a blank box to the left of my title. Can this be fixed?
Hi Dan,
Please see our guide on Facebook incorrect thumbnail issue in WordPress.
Good article, but for some reason my photos and text are not displaying properly now when they did before. When I align left or right it shows the text next to the photo in the edit page screen (visual) but when I load the site up the text is all below the image leaving a big gap. I’d appreciate some advice please.
Thanks
Hi great site and lots of helpful information. I was wondering if you would have some advice on something I’m having a problem with on my blog . I post an article and attach pictures then few weeks down the line the articles can only be viewed on large electronic devices and not mobile devices . They were seen originally on mobile devices then disappear. I have attached a plug in update which was advised by HostGator. This did not rectify anything though
Hi Norma,
You can go go to Appearance > Themes page and then switch to a default WordPress theme like twenty seventeen. See if this solves the problem, if it does, then your theme is causing the issue and you need to find a different theme.
All of my images, no matter where I place them on the page will only show at the top of the post when published or previewed.
How do I make them stay in place within the text?
I’ve scaled all my featured images down to 320 x 200 from 800 x 500, to enhance load times, but I’m not seeing any savings in Pingdom and GT Metrix.
It’s as if WordPress is telling me the images are now minute, 14 kb instead of 80 kb, but the actual full size original images are still being downloaded?
Frustrating!! Can you please advise. Thanks.
I have an image that is 1700 X 500 of a product label I need to show clearly. I upload it at the regular size, I have my settings to accept an image this large, yet it puts a miniscule picture on the page – everytime. What do I need to do to put a picture on a page the size I want it? Is that something too difficult to ask for? Why does WP make everything so ^)&)*)_) complicated. This is basic stuff here.
On my WP site the featured image sometime needs to be a different size. It appears to be set to populate in my blog at the same size which happens most posts. But every once in a while the image comes into the blog through the featured image extra big. How can I adjust this?
Hi there, this is a great article, thanks. I’ve followed the instructions for adding a header image but all I get is grey. It thinks there is an image because it shows a thumbnail in the customization panel. What am I doing wrong? Thanks
Hello! Thank you so much for this article. It was very helpful.
Perhaps I missed this information, but I am still having an issue.
My readers and I cannot see my sitewide banner when we access my website.
I can see the sitewide banner when I access my website from my account on WordPress but when I look at it through my phone, an incognito window, or someones else’s laptop the banner is not visible. Instead, a question mark or tiny image box is where the banner usually is.
Any suggestions on how to fix this issue would be absolutely amazing.
Thank you in advance!
hi,
my website is not showing the images,
I deactivate wp smush, w3total catch and jetpack still this problem is happening.
please tell me what should I do?
Hi Prasad,
Please check your file and folder permissions.
My problem with WordPress 2017 is that the featured image appears on the blog post and website, but does not appear as a thumbnail when posting to Facebook. I have Yoast and all seems okay but when try to post, only website link appears, but no featured image!
Websites like you is the reason we use adblockers. DO NOT USE FULLSCREEN ADS
Hi Ali,
You saw a fullscreen ad on our website? We do not sell any ads of this sort.
Are you talking about our email optin exit-pop? If so that should only show once for a user.
-Syed
Could not resist this.
States they use A Blockers, assuming. But still got a popup.
Lets ponder on that for a few here……..
Any ways… what we need is tutorials on how NOT to send your images to your web developers. Nothing beats chopped up images that generate faceless thumbs o.O. Feaken awesome when you receive camera photos, but not all the same size and odd shapes that cause faceless (Chopped at mouth in some instances) photos. WP does great thumb generation. Now to deal with user flaws.
Can you help me… i would like to delete and upload new illustration image. I start to upload to gallery and then a system goes wrong…
Uploaded file cannot be moved to wp-content/uploads/2015/11
Wow – such a great article!! Lots of tips I need to revisit later.
Do you know of a plugin that finds unused images you may have uploaded and never used?
I had a habit of doing this, not realizing it would slow down my site…. now I can’t remember what I used and what I didn’t use.
Thanks so much!
Shannon
Hello there, I have posted some posts in my category and they all have featured images but they are all showing different sizes on the page…So is there any method that I can fix all of ’em with exact one size …
Mean they all show with one size
Here it is
I’m having an issue uploading images. I keep getting this messages:
“DSC01398.ARW” has failed to upload.
Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons.
What does this mean? And what do I need to do to fix this? It wasn’t doing this before.
Thank you
Hi Nicole,
The .ARW file is a raw image file supported by your camera. You will need to save it into a compressed file format like JPEG. Several image editing programs (Adobe Photoshop)can help you convert the file. You can also find online tools to help you convert it.
Hi. When I’m logged in as an admin and I look at my site, all of the pictures are clear. But when I go to the website from a different browser or just log out, every picture is blurry. Can you help me figure out what the problem is?
Hi, i have one issue. In here featured images are showing but images inside the post are not opening. Don’t know why please help.
Hello. I just started a blog recently, and this article is very helpful. Thank you. I wonder if you can help with a problem I am having with headers using the Tuulikki theme. I uploaded my logo for the “post page header,” but I am unhappy with the way it “floats” in the middle of the page while scrolling down. I would like it to remain in the navigation bar. I would also be happy to remove it altogether, but when I tried that, my website url appeared in the navigation bar and my large homepage logo drops down during scrolldown and takes up about half of the page. Any tips would be much appreciated!
How do you resize header images or force a resize? I’m using 2013 and WordPress displays a 565 pixel wide image in the header and blows it up beyong the bounds of screen.
Hi Corey,
Please see our guide on how to regenerate images in WordPress.
Hi,
Thank you for the helpful post and quick question: when publishing our posts with image they arrive the e-mail accounts from our subscribers without the image. how can I fix that please? Thank you tons, and thank you so much for your help
PEZO
You’re my hero! Thank you for explaining how to set a feature image in such plain English. I’m new to site building and get so tripped up on the little things. Seriously, thank you for sharing!
Hello!
Thank so much for putting this guide together! My problem is that I have the images on my post and when they ALL show it’s great.. but sometimes it shows up perfectly and other times only half my pictures show up — this is both mobile and desktop. I’ve re-uploaded the images and made sure to import it into wordpress’s gallery but it’s still happening.
Please help!!
Thank you
Hi Trinity,
You can try using inspect tool in your browser to see if it reports any errors. If this doesn’t help, then try steps mentioned in our WordPress troubleshooting guide. It will help you figure out what’s causing the issue and then you will be able fix it.
Hello,
Thank you for the helpful tips. I am still having an issue with aligning my pictures. They are properly aligned with the text wrapping around them – exactly how I want it – but when I preview it they still are not aligned and there is no text wrapping.
What am I doing wrong!?
Thank you for any help you can give me.
I have recently changed laptops from windows to a mac.
I changed my default browser to Chrome from the Safari that Macs come with.
Now when I go to upload an image in Chrome, I get an http error in WP post, also I cannot upload any image with Chrome on Mac into my WP site.
However, when I switched browsers back to Safari, my images uploaded like normal.
I would rather use Chrome. Any suggestions on how to fix this image problem on my site while using Chrome so that I do not have to switch back and forth to Safari? Thank you
Hey Kristine,
Try to log out of your WordPress admin area in Google Chrome. Clear your browser cookies and cache. Restart your browser and login to WordPress admin area. If that doesn’t work, then please try steps mentioned in our WordPress troubleshooting guide.
when I type my website address into someone’s Facebook page, a picture appears with it that is not the picture I want to be the preview for my web address. For example, right now it’s posted one of the pictures from my last blog. I don’t want to feature a picture that shows up in every blog I make, but I want a specific one to show whenever I list my web address . How do I do thst? Many thanks!
Hi Victoria,
Facebook uses open graph meta data from your website to display a thumbnail. If it isn’t present, then it automatically picks any other image from your site. To make sure you see the appropriate image, you will need to tell Facebook which one to show. For instructions, please see our guide on how to add Facebook Open Garph data in WordPress.
I just changed themes. My blog page list used to show the images I used for each post (content image, not featured image). I use the URL for the images, not my media library. The individual post page shows the images, but the blog list page does not unless I add the image to the media library. Is there any code and/or plug-in I can use to make sure the image is included on the blog list page when I add it to the content of the individual post? Is there a way to populate the posts that included the image in the past, but no longer show the image on the list page? Thanks!!!
My page header calls for 2560x500pixels. But when I create a header in those specs, WP displays it huge. Only part of the header shows up. My site is in case you need to see it.
THANKS, very aggravating.
I suddenly have a shadow message on my photo for the header. I have tried everything I know how to delete it but can’t. Your assistance is appreciated.
warning: call_user_function_array () expects parameter 1 to be a valid callback, function” primer_ video_ header” not found etc etc etc
Hi. I migrated with you guys from blogger to wordpress. Now all of my images on old blog posts are blurry. Is there a way to change them all in bulk? The regenerate thumbnails thing doesn’t work. Do I have to literally go and resize them all one by one?
Hey Ruth,
Can you please share your site’s link here in the comment so that we can look at it? Thanks
I always prefer wp beginner for my website for fix to any error and this site is one of the best platform for any problem solution
Hi there,
Many images diappeared from the website and seem to be missing from the Media Library thumbnail. They seem to still be there but it is a gray square and it shows no picture when I open it on the library apart from the name of the file.
Any idea how to solve this?
Jalal
hello i recently started creating a blog with bluehost via wordpress, however the one issue i cant seem to find help with is that when i want to upload an image i click select files and nothing happens, it doesnt bring up any of my pictures i dont know what to do. i tried the upload files tab and the media library tab.. nothing please help with any advice
I’ve had my WordPress blog for a few years but have, on more than one occasion, somehow accidentally increased the size, only on my view. I’ve checked and it’s okay on my partner’s laptop but it’s just enormous on mine. I found the solution twice before on google but can’t find it now. I know it was something very simple but I can’t remember what! Repeating, it is just my view that’s grown, not the blog itself.
Hi Chris,
It is probably your browser’s zoom settings. If you are using Google Chrome, then press CTRL+0 (Command+0 on Mac) keys on your keyboard.
I m uploading products into shop menu. When I enter the text the image scales and change the size and all the images are different sized depending on how long is my text. How do I have a fixed size?
Hello,
Please how do I fix this issue I have each time I try uploading image.
“Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2017/03. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”
Thank you
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
It seems like you have incorrect file and folder permissions which is stopping WordPress from creating folders and saving your images. Please see our guide on how to fix file and folder permissions in WordPress.
I have changed the folder and file permissions as recommended but I am still getting the error
“Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2017/03. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”
each time I try uploading image or file.
What more can I do to resolve this.
Thomas
Hi Wpbeginner,
We have just bought the Tuulikki Template from Creative Market.
Unfortunately our imported images (from Blogger) don’t show.
There are no images on our homepage. Only when you click on a link and open the blogpost, sometimes the image within will show. So this means they are uploaded and somewhere in there, right? We can’t figure out why they aren’t showing on the homepage and how to fix this. We hope you can help us out.
Thank you so much in advance
Hi Sharon,
Please try instructions in our guide on how to import external images in WordPress.
I have some issue with my site ; wordpress of course ; image header and sometimes footer too broke , how could I fix it? I have done all i can do , but nothing .
I really like your feature images on WPBeginner.
What fonts are you using there?
Help I had a background image and for some reason its gone. I have tried reassigning it, re-uploading it, and changing the image all together. I have even tried changing my theme and nothing works it doesnt show. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me
Need help. I’m using Seos Music theme and all my posts that get published on my primary page are automatically aligned to the right. In the archive pages its correctly aligned. According to seos music theme it shouldn’t be doing this but I probably added a plugin for something else and it ruined this. Do you know which classes to look for to fix this issue if you ever heard of this happening?
To fix the hhtp error when uploading images I tried loads of fixes listed on various websites, however the fix that worked for me was to add a line of code to the .htaccess file to modify the PHP version being used.
The default our web hosting provider was using 5.5, but 5.6 and 7.0 can also be specified.
Adding the following line of code to the .htaccess file cured the image upload issue for me on various sites.
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php56 .php
(Note the gap before .php should be left exactly as shown)
For 7.0 it would be:
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php70 .php
Your web hosting provider should be able to advise you what versions of PHP they support.
hi, I see many helpful tips in your article, however I can’t use them because somehow I do not seem to get an editing screen like yours. Mine does not have any buttons for cropping, scaling or mirroring and things like that. Do you know what I am doing wrong?
Thank you for a great article.
I would like to know how can I optimize my wordpress webpage by taking into consideration sizes of the images to load.
What is really strange is the fact that my full webpage is loading much faster (it has almost half of the size as my mobile version). In fact, I can observe that wordpress tries to download bigger image files for my mobile version that for the full webpage.
I have tried to force images to have “medium” size, but nonetheless they are not loading this way on mobile (it was tester in network tab in dev tools).
Just to add, I have tried to minimize my images in various ways. I upload 1200 x 900 image and then it is resized by wordpress. Somehow, wordpress forces to load bigger images than needed – sometimes it is loading full image and sometimes in the resolution belonging to “medium-large” size.
What is really strange is the fact that when wordpress processes my 1200 x 900 image it produces another image with the same resolution that is bigger than my initial file.
Could you please let me know what is the best way of dealing with the problem described?
Hello-
this site is absolutely amazing!! thank you for all the valuable inside.
i had a question about my header. I have a not so wonderful premium theme. I added the image to my site, but it only appears on the left corner on a laptop browser. I looks perfect on my iPad though. Anyone one else experience or have any advise? thanks
Hi I wondering, I can not insert photos with this add media button. Even I click on it nothing happen.
Why is it not possible to change the feature image after published?
Hi Natasha,
You can easily change featured image by editing a post. Scroll down to featured image box and then click on the remove featured image link.
Hi,
I have the following problem listed below.
When I select a photo to integrate in my post as a featured image, it displays ok within the home page and also in my post page however when i try to edit my image like cropping/rotating/mirroring etc. the image is not shown. The link of the image is broken it appears.
Could you advise, please ?
Very helpful article thanks.
Can you tell me why some images that I have added into my posts appear to ‘move’ when hovered over yet others do not? I love the look of this and would like it to happen consistently across my images.
A pdf version of this would be awesome!
Good article, but the problem I’m having is I edited a picture using picmonkey and used that as my featured image and now, at the top of my post, the featured image is left-aligned. How do I fix that??? There are no options for alignment (or much else) on featured images.
Hi,
m using the twenty sixteen child theme and I’m working on speeding up my loading time. I used pingdom for the speed check. My home page came out as the third biggest file while the page only contains 1 image of 600 x 400 and my other pages got sliders with more than 10 images. So I dont understand why the file size of my homepage is so big. And how I should ajdust this. I have inserted the image with insert media and not with a featured image. Not sure what the difference is. But when I use featured images the file will become even bigger.
Hopefully you can help me out on this.
Hazy