Google Docs – Working with images (part 2)

In the previous post on working with images in Google Docs, we looked at the different ways to get images into your document, now let’s look at editing those images in Docs. We’ll look at the following:

• Resizing an image
• Adding a border
• Changing its properties
• Cropping an image
• Rotating an image
• Replacing an image
• Positioning an image

Editing an image

Now we have an image in our document what can we do with it?

Resizing the image

Well first, probably the most common thing done with an image is to resize it so it fits well in your document. Just click on the image and drag one of the blue dots. I usually use one of the corner dots, so as not to distort the image.

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Now let’s look at further editing options. Clicking on your image will change the toolbar at the top to give you various image editing options.

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Adding a border

Click on the image and then click on “Line colour” in the toolbar. This will open the colour palette. Click on the colour you want.

Here I’ve gone for a tasteful shade of red, just so you can see what’s going on.

To change the border thickness, click on “Line weight” and select a thickness.

To change the line style, click on “Line dash”. There are only 3 options here.

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Cropping an image

Sometimes you need to crop your image to get rid of certain parts of it. You can do that right within Docs and best of all it’s non-destructive, which means if you crop an image, you can always go back and uncrop it.

To crop it, click on “Crop image” in the toolbar.

Your image will now have black lines around it showing the corners and sides which can be cropped.

Click on one of the blank lines and move it inwards. It will show you the area that will remain and the part of the image that will be cropped (greyed out).

Once it’s in the place you want it, to crop it, just press “Enter”.

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Rotating an image

Click on the image and at the top of it you will see a small circle.

To rotate the image, click on the circle and hold the button down and drag your mouse to the left or right.

Rotating an image which has a border whilst cropping can produce an interesting effect. Go to crop the image as explained above, but don’t press Enter yet.

Rotate the image, and you’ll notice that if you have a border, this doesn’t rotate but the image does.

Then press Enter. You see the image has rotated but the border hasn’t.

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Changing the image properties

You can change the colouring, transparency, brightness, and contrast of the image. Click on the image, then “Image options”.

This brings up the “Image options” side toolbar. Re-colour, just the overall colouring of the image. Under Adjustments move the sliders to change the transparency, brightness, and contrast.

Here I’ve changed some of the settings.

And here’s the result. Not exactly Photoshop, but it gives you some control over the way your images look.

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Replacing an image

To replace an image, click on it and click “Replace image”.

This will open the same menu as inserting an image, giving you options to insert an image from.

Note, it will fit the new image to the size of the original one, which sometimes is fine and can save you reformatting it, but sometimes means you have to resize the image.

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Positioning an image in a text

In this final part, we’ll look at how you can position the image in relation to your text in different ways. There are 3 ways:

• In line
• Wrap text
• Break text

Click on your image and you will see the 3 options at the bottom:

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In line

By default, it will be on “In line”. This means the image will be placed on a line of the text, as if it were a piece of text. Below it was placed between the words “just” and “start”.

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Wrap text

Below I’ve selected “wrap text” and positioned the image to the right. The text wraps itself around the image.

With Wrap text (and Break text below), you can change the amount of space around the image, by clicking on the margin menu and selecting an amount. Here, I’ve increased from 3.2mm to 13mm.

Note, this may be in fractions of inches if your account is in a country that uses the imperial system.

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Break text

Sometimes you want don’t want any text on the same row as the image. “Break text” allows the image to be in the middle of the text, but with no text to the sides, which can make it a lot clearer.