Help:Images

Important note: When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution into the public domain. If you don't want this or can't do this because of license restrictions, please don't edit. This page is one of the Public Domain Help Pages, which can be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software; see Help:Contents for an overview of all pages. See Project:PD help/Copying for instructions.

This page explains the image syntax when editing the wiki. You or another user must usually upload an image before you can use it on a page.

Syntax

The full syntax for displaying an image is:

 [[File:{file_name}|{options}]]

Where options can be zero or more of the following, separated by pipes:

• border, frame, thumb, or frameless: Controls how the image is formatted
• left, right, center, none: Controls the alignment of the image within a text
• baseline, sub, super, top, text-top, middle, bottom, text-bottom: Controls the vertical alignment of the image within a text
• {width} px: Resizes the image to the given width in pixels
• {width}x{height}px: Resizes the image to fit within the given width and height in pixels; it is possible to specify only the height by writing x{height}px
  • Note that the image will always retain its aspect ratio.
• link={destination}: Allows to link to an arbitrary title, URL or just nowhere (1.14+)
  • link= : Will display an image without link, e.g. [[File:Example.jpg|20px|link=Help:Images]] → .
  • Note that link cannot be used in conjunction with thumb as thumb is always meant to link to the larger version of the image. In addition, link cannot be used with frame.
• alt={alternative text}: For changing the alternative text (alt="") of an image (1.14+)
• Special cases:
  • page=1: Displays the specified page when showing a djvu or pdf file

The options can be given in any order. If the given options conflict each other, the latter is applied, except for the format options, where the options take the priority in the order of frame, thumb, and frameless and/or border.

If a given option does not match any of the other possibilities, it is assumed to be the caption text. Caption text can contain wiki links or other formatting. If no caption text is supplied a caption is automatically created showing the file name; to completely remove the caption, set it to <span title=""></span>. For example, [[File:Example.jpg|20px|<span title=""></span>]] → .

Format

The following table shows the effect of all available formats.

Description	You type	You get
no format specified	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
border results in a very small gray border	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|border|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
frame	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|frame|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text caption text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
thumb	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|thumb|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text caption text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
frameless, like thumbnail, respect user preferences for image width but without border and no right float	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|frameless|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
frameless and border	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|frameless|border|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
internal link	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|link=Main Page|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
external link	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|link=http://wikipedia.org|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
no link (external or file page)	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|link=|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

When the height of an image in thumbnail is bigger than its width and you find it too outstanding, you may try the option upright, which will try to adjust its size to more desirable size.

Note that by writing thumb={filename}, you can use a different image for the thumbnail.

Alignment

Note that when using frame or thumb, the default alignment will be right.

Description	You type	You get
no alignment specified, or default alignment	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
specify alignment as none	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|none|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
center	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|center|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
left	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|left|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text
right	... text text text [[File:example.jpg|right|caption]] text text text ...	text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

Vertical alignment

text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|baseline]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|sub]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|super]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|text-top]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|middle]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|bottom]]
text text [[File:Example.jpg|20px|text-bottom]]

results in (the text is underlined to show the result more clearly)

text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text

Size and Frame

Among different formats, the effect of the size parameter may be different, as shown below.

• When the format is not specified, or only bordered, the size can be both reduced and enlarged.
• An image with frame always ignores the size specification.
• The size of an image with thumb and frameless can be reduced, but can not be enlarged beyond the original size of the image.

For how it appears when its size is not specified, see Format section above.

Stopping text flow

On occasion it is desirable to stop text from flowing around an image. Depending on the web browser's screen resolution and such, text flow on the right side of an image may cause a section header (for instance, == My Header ==) to appear to the right of the image, instead of below it, as a user may expect. The text flow can be stopped by placing <br style="clear: both" /> before the text that should start after the image.

Gallery of images

It's easy to make a gallery of thumbnails only, not other images, with the <gallery> tag. The syntax is:

<gallery>
File:Image Name.ext|caption
File:Image Name.ext|caption
{...}
</gallery>

Note that the image code is not enclosed in brackets when enclosed in gallery tags.

Captions are optional, and may contain wiki links or other formatting.

for example:

<gallery>
File:Example.jpg|Item 1
File:Example.jpg|a link to [[Help:Contents]]
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg| ''italic caption''
File:Example.jpg|on page "{{PAGENAME}}"
</gallery>

is formatted as:

• 

  Item 1

• 

  a link to Help:Contents

• 
• 
• 

  italic caption

• 

  on page "Images"

Parameters

The gallery tag itself takes several additional parameters:

<gallery {parameters}>
{images}
</gallery>

• caption={caption}: sets a caption on the gallery.
• widths={width}px: sets the widths of the images. Note the plural, widths
• heights={heights}px: sets the (max) heights of the images.
• perrow={integer}: sets the number of images per row.

Example:

Coding:

<gallery widths=60px heights=60px perrow=7 caption="sunflowers are groovy">
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
File:Example.jpg
</gallery>

Result:

• sunflowers are groovy
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Links

Link to description page

If you put a colon (:) before File:, the image will not be embedded and the link will lead to the description page of the file.

[[:File:MediaWiki:Image sample]]
[[:File:MediaWiki:Image sample|Sunflowers]]

results in

[[:File:MediaWiki:Image sample]] [[:File:MediaWiki:Image sample|Sunflowers]]

Link to an other page

This will make a 50px width picture with a link to the page MediaWiki:

[[File:Wiki.png|50px|link=MediaWiki]]

Link directly to file

You can use the pseudo-namespace “Media” to link directly to a file, bypassing the description page.

[[Media:MediaWiki:Image sample]]
[[Media:MediaWiki:Image sample|Sunflowers]]

results in

[[Media:MediaWiki:Image sample]] [[Media:MediaWiki:Image sample|Sunflowers]]

You can also use: 

[[Special:FilePath/MediaWiki:Image sample]]

which can be used to link to a potential file, even if it doesn't exist. You can also use:

{{FILEPATH:MediaWiki:Image sample}}

which generates an external URL to the file inline:

Requisites

Before using images in your page, the system administrator of your wiki must have enabled file uploads and a user has to upload the file. System administrators may also set the wiki to accept files from foreign repositories, such as the Wikimedia Commons. For server side image resizing it is necessary to have a scaler configured (such as GD2, ImageMagick, etc.).

Files at other websites

You can link to an external file available online using the same syntax used for linking to an external web page.

[http://url.for/some/image.png]

Or with different text:

[http://url.for/some/image.png link text here]

If it is enabled on your wiki (see Manual:$wgAllowExternalImages), you can also embed external images. To do that, simply insert the image's url:

http://url.for/some/image.png

Language:

English