Document library image options

The Document Library Pro plugin fully supports images, and you can include an image of each document if you like. These can appear on the main document library page, and also on the individual page for each document.

For example, you can use images to:

Manually add file type icons, which might be needed if you have set up the document link field to display a button or text link instead of an icon.
Add a screenshot of the front cover of the document to provide a preview before people download it.
Upload any other type of image to represent the document.

How to add featured images to documents

If the document is an image file with a file extension of .gif, .jpg/.jpeg, .png or .webp, then the featured image will automatically be created when you add the document. These will appear in the image column. Please note that these images are only added when you first create a document with a downloadable image file, and if you replace the downloadable image in future then you will need to manually change the featured image if needed.

To add images for other types of documents, you need to manually set a 'Featured image' when adding the document. If you want to display the same image for each document then you can use the free Default Featured Image plugin.

Images in the document grid layout

The grid layout is designed to work best with square images.

If you have enabled the 'Image' field in the grid layout then it will show the document's featured image if there is one. If there is no image then the file type icon will show instead. For the grid layout, we recommend adding images at least 800px wide - and ideally at least 1024x wide. This ensures that there is no extra space to the left and right of the image, regardless of the number of columns in the grid.

Image size

Table layout only

The Image size option controls the size of the featured image if you have included an image column in your table.

The default image size is 70x70 pixels. You can use a width × height value in pixels or any standard WordPress image size such as thumbnail, medium, large, etc.

If you specify only one number, this is used for both the width and height. You can include px after the number to indicate the number of pixels, or omit it - so 70px is the same as 70.

You can set the image size option globally in the settings page, or add it directly to the shortcode for individual tables using the image_size shortcode option.

Shortcode examples:

Square image 50 by 50 pixels: [doc_library content="image,title,content" image_size="50"]
Image 40 pixels wide by 60 pixels high: [doc_library content="image,title,content" image_size="40x60"]
To use the medium image size: [doc_library content="image,title,content" image_size="medium"]

My images are displaying in the wrong size

Image sizing is very complex in WordPress, and can have unexpected results. A few tips:

Your images must be the correct proportion for your chosen image size. For example, if your images are square and you set the image size to 50x40 then the images will still appear square.
If you're using the built-in image sizes (e.g. thumbnail, medium or large) then you can check their sizes in Settings → Media.
The column widths may be overriding your image sizes. For example, if you have set a fixed width for the image column and a specific image size then these options may conflict.
If you're really struggling to get your images the correct size in the table then you can resize the original image to the correct size.

The table is loading bigger images than it needs to

If you set a custom image size, WordPress will look for a registered image size that either matches this exactly or shares the same aspect ratio.

For example, let's say you set the image size to 50x100, and your site has a registered image size of 100x200 but none that matches exactly. In this case, the aspect ratio is correct so the 100x200 image will be loaded behind the scenes, and displayed at 50x100 in the table.

If there is no registered image size with the same aspect ratio then the image will be displayed as the correct size in the front end, but the full size image will be loaded in the background. This could slow down your tables.

You can use any of the following methods to prevent this from happening:

Instead of setting a custom image size, use one of the registered image sizes which are listed under Settings → Media (e.g. thumbnail or medium).
Go to Settings → Media and edit one of your existing image sizes to match the aspect ratio of the images in the table, and then regenerate your thumbnails to update all the existing images. (Warning: This will also change any images that use this size elsewhere on your site.)
Register an additional image size which matches the image sizes that you want to display in the table. Again, you will then need to regenerate your thumbnails to create a version of all your existing existing images in the new size.

If you use the image column in Document Library Pro, the image will open in a lightbox when someone clicks on the image.

WordPress table plugin image lightbox

The lightbox uses the Photoswipe library and is enabled by default. If you would like to disable the lightbox feature, you can untick this option on the plugin settings page:

You can also enable or disable it for individual tables by setting the lightbox option in the shortcode:

[doc_library lightbox="false"]

The lightbox uses the Photoswipe library. Unfortunately there are no options to customize this, but you can achieve this by adding additional CSS to your site.

Linking to the document page from the image column

If you would like the image to be clickable and take the user to the single document page, you need to disable the lightbox as described above. Once you've done this, the image column will instead link to the relevant single document page - see the links article for more details.

How to remove images from the table

If you don't want to include images in the table at all, then you can delete the image column from the list of table fields. Please see the article about editing columns in the table.

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