How To Style Images With CSS

In this tutorial, you will learn how to style images with CSS to add a border, and change the shape, and size of the image. Using CSS to style images allows you to uniformly specify how images should appear across your website with only a few rulesets.

To follow this tutorial, make sure you have set up the necessary files and folders as instructed in a previous tutorial in this series How To Set Up You CSS and HTML Practice Project.

First, you need to add an image to the images folder. You can download the image from the demonstration website or use any image in a JPEG/JPG or PNG format. This exercise will also work better if the dimensions of your image are around 150-200 pixels by 150-200 pixels.

Once you have selected an image, save it to your images folder as small-profile.jpeg. If you save it as a different file name, you’ll need to modify the image file path in the step below.

Next, erase all the content in your index.html file (except for the first line of code: <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/styles.css">) and add the following code snippet:

<img src="images/small-profile.jpeg" alt="Sammy the Shark, DigitalOcean’s mascot"> 

This code snippet uses the <img> tag to insert an image and gives the browser the location of the image file (images/small-profile.jpeg). Make sure the highlighted file path is correct if you have changed the file name of your image.

You have also added the alternative text Sammy the Shark, DigitalOcean’s mascot using the alt attribute. When creating websites, alternative text should be added to all images to support site accessibility for individuals who use screen readers. To read more about using alternative text with HTML, please visit the section on alternative text in our guide How To Add Images To Your Webpage Using HTML.

Save your index.html file and reload it in your browser. (For instructions on loading an HTML file, please visit our tutorial step How To View An Offline HTML File In Your Browser). You should receive a blank page with your image displayed:

If your image doesn’t display, check your code for errors and confirm that you have the correct file path for the image.

Now that index.html displays an image of Sammy the Shark (or the image of your choice), you’ll add a CSS rule to style the image. In your styles.css file, erase everything (if you’ve been following along the tutorial series) and add the following ruleset at the bottom of the document:

. . .
img {
  border: 2px solid red;
  border-radius: 8px;
  width: 200px;
}

Save your styles.css file and reload your index.html file in your browser. You should now receive an image with new style properties:

In this CSS rule, you have specified values for three different properties of the HTML <img> element. Let’s pause to examine each of the different properties and values:

• The border property allows you to add a border to your image and specify the size, style, and color of the border. Notice that you can add multiple values for this CSS property. In this rule, you have specified a solid, red border with a width of 2px.

• The border-radius property defines the radius of an element’s corners, allowing you to round the edges of an element. In this rule, you have specified 8 pixels as the size of the radius. Try changing this number to see how it affects the display of the image.

• The width property defines the width of the image. In this rule, you have specified the width to be 200 pixels wide. Note that if you leave the height undefined, the height of the image will automatically adjust to maintain the original proportions of the image. Try changing both the height and width at the same time to check what happens.

Note that if you add any additional images to your HTML document, they will also have the same styling. To study how this works, add a second image to your index.html file using the HTML <img> element. (You can copy and paste the first <img> element if you don’t have a second image handy):

<img src="images/small-profile.jpeg" alt="Sammy the Shark, DigitalOcean’s mascot"> 
<img src="images/small-profile.jpeg" alt="Sammy the Shark, DigitalOcean’s mascot"> 

Make sure to change the highlighted section with your image file path. Save your index.html file and load it in the browser. Your webpage should display two images styled with the same CSS ruleset for the <img> tag:

To continue exploring style possibilities for images, try changing the values in the CSS rule you just created in the styles.css file, saving the file, and reloading the index.html to check the results.

In this tutorial you explored how to style an image’s border size, color, appearance, height, width, and border radius. You will return to image styling when you begin building the demonstration website in the second half of this tutorial series.

Now that you are familiar with how to apply a set of style rules to all <img> elements, you may be curious how to apply different style rules to individual or groups of <img> elements. In the next tutorial, you will create CSS classes, which allow developers to sort HTML elements into different classes for different CSS styling.