Image Component

The Core Component Image Component is an adaptive image component that features in-place editing.

Usage

The Image Component features adaptive image selection and responsive behavior with lazy loading for the page visitor as well as easy image placement and cropping for the content author.

The image widths and additional settings can be defined by the template author in the design dialog. The content editor can upload or select assets in the configure dialog.

Version and Compatibility

The current version of the Image Component is v3, which was introduced with release 2.18.0 of the Core Components in February 2022, and is described in this document.

The following table details all supported versions of the component, the AEM versions with which the versions of the component is compatible, and links to documentation for previous versions.

For more information about Core Component versions and releases, see the document Core Components Versions.

Responsive Features

The Image Component comes with robust responsive features ready right out of the box. At the page template level, the design dialog can be used to define the default widths of the image asset. The Image Component will then automatically load the correct width to display depending on the size of the browser window. As the window is resized, the Image Component dynamically loads the correct image size on the fly. There is no need for component developers to worry about defining custom media queries since the Image Component is already optimized to load your content.

In addition, the Image Component supports lazy loading to defer loading of the actual image asset until it is visible in the browser, increasing the responsiveness of your pages.

Dynamic Media Support

The Image Component (as of release 2.13.0) supports Dynamic Media assets. When enabled, these features offer the ability to add Dynamic Media image assets with a simple drag-and-drop or via the assets browser just as you would any other image. In addition, image modifiers, image presets, and smart crops are also supported.

Your web experiences built with Core Components can no feature rich, Sensei-powered, robust, high-performance, cross-platform Dynamic Media Image capabilities.

SVG Support

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) are supported by the Image Component.

• Drag-and-drop of an SVG asset from DAM and upload of an SVG file upload from a local file system are both supported.
• The Adaptive Image Servlet streams the original SVG file is streamed (transformations are skipped).
• For an SVG image, the "smart images” and the "smart sizes” are set to an empty array in the image model.

Security

For security reasons, the original SVG is never called directly by the Image Editor. It is called through <img src=“path-to-component”>. This prevents the browser from executing any scripts embedded in the SVG file.

Sample Component Output

To experience the Image Component as well as see examples of its configuration options as well as HTML and JSON output, visit the Component Library.

Technical Details

The latest technical documentation about the Image Component can be found on GitHub.

Further details about developing Core Components can be found in the Core Components developer documentation.

The Image Component supports schema.org microdata.

Configure Dialog

The image component offers a configure dialog where the image itself is defined along with its description and basic properties.

Asset Tab

• Inherit featured image from page - This option uses the featured image of the linked page or the featured image of the current page if the image is not linked.

• Alternative text for accessibility - This field allows you to define a description of the image for visually impaired users.

  • Inherit alternative text from page - This option uses the alternative description of the linked asset value of the dc:description metadata in DAM or of the current page if no asset is linked.

• Image asset

  • Drop an asset from the asset browser or tap the browse option to upload from a local file system.
  • Tap or click Clear to de-select the currently selected image.
  • Tap or click Edit to mange the renditions of the asset in the asset editor.

• Don’t provide an alternative text - This option marks the image to be ignored by assistive technologies like screen readers for cases where the image is purely decorative or otherwise conveys no additional information to the page.

Metadata Tab

• Preset Type - This defines the types of image presets available, either Image Preset or Smart Crop, and is only available when Dynamic Media features are enabled.
  • Image Preset - When Preset Type of Image Preset is selected, the drop down Image Preset is available, allowing selection from the available Dynamic Media presets. This is only available if presets are defined for the selected asset.
  • Smart Crop - When Preset Type of Smart Crop is selected the drop down Rendition is available, allowing selection from the available renditions of teh selected asset. This is only available if renditions are defined for the selected asset.
  • Image Modifiers - Additional Dynamic Media image serving commands can be defined here separated by &, regardless of which Preset Type is selected.
• Caption - Additional information about the image, displayed below the image by default.
  • Get caption from DAM - When checked the image’s caption text will be populated with the value of the dc:title metadata in DAM.
  • Display caption as pop-up - When checked, the caption won’t be displayed below the image, but as a pop-up displayed by some browsers when hovering over the image.
• Link - Link the image to another resource.
  • Use the selection dialog to link to another AEM resource.
  • If not linking to an AEM resource, enter the absolute URL. Non-solute URLs will be interpreted as relative to AEM.
  • Open link in new tab - This option opens the link in a new browser window.
• ID - This option allows to control the unique identifier of the component in the HTML and in the Data Layer.
  • If left blank, a unique ID is automatically generated for you and can be found by inspecting the resulting page.
  • If an ID is specified, it is the responsibility of the author to make sure that it is unique.
  • Changing the ID can have an impact on CSS, JS and Data Layer tracking.

Styles Tab

The Image Component supports the AEM Style System..

Use the drop-down to select the styles that you want to apply to the component. Selections made in the edit dialog have the same effect as those chosen from the component toolbar.

Styles must be configured for this component in the design dialog in order for the drop down menu to be available.

Design Dialog

• Enable DM features - When checked, Dynamic Media features are available.
  • This option only appears when Dynamic Media is enabled in the environment.
• Disable lazy loading - When checked, the component will preload all images without lazy loading.
• Image is decorative - Define if the decorative image option is automatically enabled when adding the image component to a page.
• Get alternative text from DAM- Define if the option to retrieve the alternate text from the DAM is automatically enabled when adding the image component to a page.
• Get caption from DAM - Define if the option to retrieve the caption from the DAM is automatically enabled when adding the image component to a page.
• Display caption as pop-up - Define if the option to display the image caption as a pop-up is automatically enabled when adding the image component to a page.
• Resize width - This value is used for resizing the width of the base images that are DAM assets.
  • The aspect ratio of the images will be preserved.
  • If the value is larger than the actual width of the image, this value will have no effect.
  • This value has no effect on SVG images.

You can define a list of widths in pixels for the image and the component will automatically load the most appropriate width based on browser size. This is an important part of the responsive features of the Image Component.

• Widths - Defines a list of widths in pixels for the image and the component automatically loads the most appropriate width based on browser size.
  • Tap or click the Add button to add another size.
    • Use the grab handles to re-arrange the order of the sizes.
    • Use the Delete icon to remove a width.
  • By default images loading is deferred until they become visible.
    • Select the option Disable lazy loading to load the images upon page load.
• JPEG Quality - The quality factor (in percentage from 0 and 100) for transformed (e.g. scaled or cropped) JPEG images.

Styles Tab

The Image Component supports the AEM Style System.

Adaptive Image Servlet

The Image Component uses the Core Component’s Adaptive Image Servlet. The Adaptive Image Servlet is responsible for image processing and streaming and can be leveraged by developers in their customizations of the Core Components.

Optimizing Rendition Selection

The Adaptive Image Servlet will try to pick the best rendition for the requested image size and type. It’s recommended that DAM renditions and Image component allowed widths are defined in sync so that the Adaptive Image Servlet does as little processing as possible.

This will improve performance and avoid some images not being correctly processed by the underlying image processing library.

Adobe Client Data Layer

The Image Component supports the Adobe Client Data Layer.