Uploading and Editing Images in WP 2.9 Lesson

Added to WordPress 2.9 is the ability to edit your media library images right in the wp-admin. Without having to add any plugins or use any third party software you can scale, crop, rotate and flip images. While WordPress developers will continue to use image editing programs such as Photoshop, many of my clients will welcome this new feature. Let’s take a walk through the steps of uploading and editing images.

UPLOADING IMAGES:

There are two ways to upload images to your Medial Library:

1. Upload/Insert Images from a Page or Post:

Have a look at the top of the WordPress visual editor next to the words Upload/Insert. There you will find icons for adding media. Click on the first icon to upload and image to the server and attached it to a page or post. Browse your computer to find the image, click upload, decide how you want the image to appear (centered, left, right) and if you don’t need to edit the image further you can insert the image into your post or page.

2. Upload to the Media Library:

Click Media in the left hand column to expand the menu. Then click add new. Now click the browse button and find the image on your computer that you want to upload and click open. You need to click upload to send the image to the server. The image will be added to your media library for use on posts and pages.

EDITING IMAGES in WordPress 2.9:

Let’s look at how to use the new editing features of WordPress 2.9 . To begin upload an image using one of the methods above and then click on the Edit image button

This will open the WordPress image editor

Resizing or Scale Image

You can proportionally scale an image. It is best to scale the image first before doing other operations. Enter one dimensions pixel size and the other dimension will automatically be calculated for you.

Cropping

select the crop tool icon
click on the image where you want to start the crop and drag to draw the crop zone. While dragging the dimensions of the selection are displayed to the right of the image.
now click the crop icon again to crop the image
you can select if you want to apply the change to All image sizes or just the thumbnail
click the update media button

Crop Aspect Ratio
You can specify the crop selection aspect ratio then hold down the Shift key while dragging to lock it. The values can be 1:1 (square), 4:3, 16:9, etc. If there is a selection, specifying aspect ratio will set it immediately.

Crop Selection
Once started, the selection can be adjusted by entering new values (in pixels). Note that these values are scaled to approximately match the original image dimensions. The minimum selection size equals the thumbnail size as set in the Media settings.