Blog image styles

Before creating image styles we need to fully understand the need for our images. This will allow us to create image styles that can be reused rather than creating one-offs.

For the homepage blog posts we are going to create two types of image styles:

• 16:9 aspect ratio image styles for the posts in the From our blog section

• 2:3 aspect ratio image styles for the posts in the Featured content section

In addition, we will create 2x image styles for each to cover high resolution screens.

Creating blog posts image styles

Create the following image styles:

Name	Dimensions	Effect
16:9 Medium 460x258	460x258	Scale and crop
16:9 Large 720x405	720x405	Scale and crop
2:3 Small 200x260	200x260	Scale and crop
2:3 Medium 400x520	400x520	Scale and crop

Creating blog posts responsive image styles

Now let's create responsive image styles where we can combine each of the similar image styles into separate bundles.

Name	Include image styles
Blog teaser	16:9 Small 460x258 and 16:9 Small 720x405
Blog featured	2:3 Small 200x260 and 2:3 Medium 400x520

It can be confusing, but Responsive Image Styles are not the same as Image Styles. I think of responsive image styles as bundles that can contain one or multiple image styles.

1. From Drupal's admin toolbar click Configuration | Media | Responsive Images Styles (Responsive Images core module must be enabled for this option)

2. Click the Add responsive image style button

3. Type Blog teaser for label

4. For Responsive group select Responsive Image

5. Select one of the smaller images styles we created as Fallback image style and press the Save button

6. Expand 1x Viewport Sizing [ ]

7. Under Type check Select multiple image styles and use the sizes attribute

8. In the Sizes box, type 25vw (this tells Drupal to render the image at about 25% the width or viewport width)

9. Under Image Styles check all the image shown above for Blog teaser

10. Click the Save button

11. Repeat steps 3 throughout 10 with Blog featured.

Media view modes

Since we are using media reference as the field for the blog images, we are going to create two view modes for the media type Image. These view modes are Blog teaser and Blog featured.

1. From Drupal's admin toolbar click Structure | Media types | Image > Manage display

2. Expand the CUSTOM DISPLAY SETTINGS fieldset

3. Click Manage view modes

4. Scroll down to Media and click Add new Media view mode

5. Name it Blog teaser and click the Save button. If you scroll down again you will see Blog teaser as one of the view modes for Media

6. Repeat this step with a new view mode called Blog featured

7. Repeat steps 1 & 2 above to return to the image configuration page

8. Expand the CUSTOM DISPLAY SETTINGS fieldset again and you should see the Blog teaser and Blog featured view modes

9. Select Blog teaser and Blog featured and press the Save button to enable the new view modes

10. Click Blog teaser from the list of view modes

11. Ensure Image is the only field outside of the Disabled group

12. Change the FORMAT from Image to Responsive Image

13. Click the cogwheel icon on the right of the page, next to Select a responsive image style

14. Under Responsive Image Style select Blog teaser

15. Click the Update button then the Save button

16. Repeat steps 10 through 15 with the Blog featured view mode

By creating a view mode for the Image Media Entity we can define configurations that will only affect the Blog images and not other images on our site. However, there is one more step to do before we can see the changes reflected in the hero image.

Configure blogs image field with image styles

Now that we have image styles, responsive image styles, and have set up view modes for each type of blog images, it's time to do the final step which is configure the image field in the Blog content type to use the newly configured settings.

1. From Drupal's admin toolbar click Structure | Content types | Blog | Manage display

2. Click the Teaser view mode

3. Identify the Image field in the table and click the cogwheel icon located all the way to the right of the image field

4. Under View mode select Blog teaser

5. Click the Update button then the Save button

6. Repeat these steps with the Featured view mode and use the Blog featured view mode for the image.

In some cases you may need to clear your Drupal caches. Visit the homepage and your blog posts images should now look nice and consistent.

• Inspect any of the images by right-clicking on the hero image and select Inspect or Inspect element depending on your browser

• You will notice that the code for the image has now changed to include all the image styles we created as well as their dimensions and the sizes information. With this we are giving the browser a collection of images to choose from, how big we want them to be rendered. Now the browser can pick the best image possible for each breakpoint.