Media Library – Hugh's Views & News

If you read my recent blog post How To Access And Use The WordPress Free Photo Library, you’ll know that adding images to blog posts plays an important part in driving more traffic to your blog.

Blog posts containing images are 70% more likely to get read than blog posts than contain no images.

WordPress now offers its users lots of free photo editing tools.

Today, I’m going to share some of the basic photo editing tools you can use in the media library of your blog.

How to edit an image in your WordPress media library

Let’s get started.

Choose a photo from your media library and click on the edit button.

On the next page, click on Edit Image.

Underneath the photo, you’ll see three editing options – Rotate, Crop and Flip.

Rotate

Rotate the image in an anticlockwise direction by clicking on the rotate button.

Click the Done button (in the bottom right corner) to save any changes.

Save changes by clicking on the **Done** button

Clicking the ‘rotate’ button four times will return the photo to its original position.

Crop

The crop button offers five options – Original – Square – 16:9 – 4:3 – 3:2. These are all ways at which you can resize a photo.

In the image below, you’ll see what part of the photo is highlighted when I chose the ‘Square‘ option.

Perfect for the Square Photography challenge hosted by Becky at The Life of B.

By clicking and holding down your mouse button inside the highlighted area, you’ll be able to move the highlighted area around.

Click the Done button to save any changes.

Click the Reset button to return the photo to its original size. You can also do this by clicking on the Crop button and select Original.

Give the different cropping options a try to see what they do to the photo you’re trying them out on.

Flip

This button flips your photo to its reverse/mirror image.

Click the Done button to save any changes.

Chris, The Story Reading Ape’s Blog, also has details of some more photo editing tools available through the WordPress media library. Click here for details.

There are lots of other photo editing options available in the various photo/image blocks of the Gutenberg block editor. We’ll look at them in future posts.

Conclusion

WordPress offers some basic photo editing tools in it’s media library.
The photo editing tools in the media library are easy to use.
The photo editing tools shown in this post are freely available to all WordPress users.
Cropping your images will resize them.
The ‘cropping’ option offers five different options.
Remember to save changes by clicking on the ‘Done’ button.
All photos can be restored to their original sizes.

Do you have any questions regarding these basic photo editing tools?

Please leave your questions in the comments section and I will get back to you.

My thanks to Toby and Austin for modelling for this tutorial.

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How To Access And Use The WordPress Free Photo Library

Where do you get the images from that you use on your blog posts? Have you discovered the WordPress free photo library?

by Hugh W. Roberts May 4, 2020June 7, 2020

If you don’t know anything about the WordPress free photo library, it contains thousands of free images that can be used by all WordPress users.

#bloggingtips #blogging #WordPress #images #photos #Howto — The WordPress Free Photo Library

I’ve been using the feature ever since it first became available. I can’t remember when WordPress first launched it, but it was certainly more than 18 months ago.

I’ve been surprised by the number of WordPress users who didn’t know about the WordPress free photo library.

It got me wondering why they hadn’t found it. I think the main problem may have been that to access the library, you had to know where to look for it.

Now, ever since WordPress mentioned it on the new ‘My Home‘ page we all see on our blogs, it’s become a lot more visible.

#bloggingtips #blogging #WordPress #photo #free #library — See it on the home page of your blog

Not only does the photo library include hundreds of free photos, it’s also easy to use.

And when you factor in that a blog post that contains images is 70% more likely to get read, it makes sense why WordPress created a free photo library for all its users.

Here’s how to access and use it.

In the draft post below, I want to insert an image of a dog between the first and second lines of the post.

#blogging #bloggingtips #WordPress — This is a draft post on the WordPress blogging platform

Click the ‘+‘ add block symbol and click on the ‘image block.’

#bloggingtips #blogging #images #WordPress #Howto — Finding the image block

You can also use the ‘search for a block‘ bar to find the image block.

Inside the image block, click on ‘Media Library.’

#bloggingtips #blogging #WordPress #images #Howto — The Media Library

In your media library, click on the box in the top left corner (just above the ‘Add New‘ box.

#blogging #bloggingtips #Howto #images #photos #media #library — The WordPress Media library

On the small dropdown menu that opens, click on ‘Free photo library.‘

#blogging #bloggingtips #wordPress #media #library — Free Photo Library

You will now have access to the WordPress free photo library.

In the search bar of the library, type in ‘dogs.’

As you type, images will start appearing.

#blogging #bloggingtips #photos #images #WordPress #Howto — Type in a word associated with the images you are searching for

Select the image you want to add to your blog post and click on the ‘copy to media library‘ button (in the bottom right corner). In the image below, I’ve selected a photo of a corgi.

#blogging #bloggingtips #images #photos #Howto — Select the image you want to use and click on the ‘copy to media library’ button

The image now appears in your media library.

Make any edits to the image before adding it to your blog post.

#blogging #bloggingtips #WordPress #Howto #editing #images — Click the edit button to edit an image

Edits include –

Alternative text for the image.

Adding a title to the image (to make finding it easier).

A description for the image (so it’s easy for you to find).

Checking and editing the dimensions of the image. Click here to find out why and how to resize the dimensions of an image to help save storage space in your media library.

Once you’re happy with everything, click on the ‘Insert button.‘

The image will appear on the post.

#blogging #bloggingtips #WordPress #media #library #dogs — The image you selected will now appear on your blog post

Any credits are also added just underneath the image. This means you don’t need to worry about not giving credit to any owners of the images you are using. WordPress takes care of this for you when you use their free photo library.

Remember – you should always give credit to the owners of any images you use in your blog posts. Failure to do so could result in you being prosecuted and/or fined for copyright infringement.

Where I can, I prefer to use my own images on my blog posts. However, where I do not have a suitable image to use, the WordPress free photo library is a fantastic source for finding that perfect image to help compliment my post.