Featured images – how to adjust images

Hi there,

There isn’t a built in setting that allows you to manage the way featured images are cropped. Instead, you could consider a plugin.

From a quick search, I found and tested the following one on my own test site, which allowed me to manually crop featured images to the size I wanted them on Canard:

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/manual-image-crop/

You can also have a search through the plugin repository for others that do a similar job.

Hope that’s helpful! We’re right here if any other questions come up, too.

Hi Siobhan,

Many thanks for your quick response!

I’ve installed and tried the plugin you mentioned. I’m cropping the 1920:768 image from its featured image position (under the tab canard-featured-content-thumbnail) I press crop and it updates. Then I update the post. However, nothing updates on the home page, the part of the image shown is still the left side only. Am I doing something wrong?

Hi @sates,

You’re right that canard-featured-content-thumbnail corresponds to images in the theme’s featured content area and the steps you took are correct.

I had a test on my own set up and was able to get the image to be more centred (which I’m assuming is your goal) by cropping the image with slightly more space to the right. I’ve created the following screenshot to illustrate how I went about it:

The plugin, therefore, may require you to experiment with different ways of cropping to get images looking the exact way you wish them to.

You could have a browse through the repository for alternative plugins to see if you can find one that doesn’t require as much trial and error.

Let me know how you get on with that!

Hi again!
Manual Image resizer still won’t work for me despite experimenting with the crop. I tried a couple of other plug ins eg optimize, but they did not even offer an option for cropping the featured images. Seems strange that no one else is asking about this on the forums, as the way I’m currently using Canard, I cannot control what it is showing in the featured images…

Hi @sates,

Could you temporarily disable Jetpack’s Photon module to see if the Manual Image Crop plugin then works as expected?

If that doesn’t make a difference, my best suggestion is for you to continue to experiment with different plugins until you find one that works for your needs. There isn’t a way to control the positioning of the image within the theme itself.

Hi Siobhan,

Again, many thanks for your suggestion. I’m still trying with other plugins and so far no luck. It’s occurred to me that maybe the ‘featured content’ settings in the plugin are not right – the main featured image is 630 x 430 when looked at from the homepage, and yet the crop images featured tab is asking me to crop at 915 x 500, for example – more of a panoramic image. Might there be some way to instruct a manual image cropper what dimensions exactly are needed?

@sates: You can reduce the size that the image is cropped at within the settings. I’ve created the following screencast to show you how I done it:

If the above doesn’t work, try temporarily disabling Jetpack’s Photon module to see if that helps.

Hi Siobhan,

I’ve experimented a lot with a few different manual image crop plugins, and with and without the photon module, but I have not once managed to affect in any way the part of the image that is displayed when I feature it. Whatever I do to crop on the manual image crop screen it won’t adjust the featured image panel on the homepage…

Hi @sates,

As the Manual Image Crop plugin worked on my own set up of Canard, the plugin may be conflicting with something on your own set up.

The general first step to troubleshooting such conflicts is to disable your other plugins one by one to see if your cropping plugin then works correctly. If you can’t pinpoint any plugins causing a conflict, you could try posting to your cropping plugin’s support forum.

There isn’t a way for you to control the positioning of the image in the theme itself and, so, the author of the plugin you’re using may have more insight into why it might not be working correctly.