category: features
CKEditor 5 introduces a new way of handling images, with strong focus on the end–user experience. This feature is called {@link features/easy-image Easy Image} and its goal is to make the image upload as effortless and intuitive as possible.
Easy Image is part of the CKEditor Cloud Services offer. It is a SaaS product which:
All that with virtually zero server setup.
Check out the comprehensive {@link features/image-upload Image upload guide} to learn about other ways to upload images in CKEditor 5.
The demo below uses the {@link builds/guides/overview#classic-editor Classic editor} configured to use the Easy Image service provided by CKEditor Cloud Services:
{@snippet build-classic-source}
{@snippet features/easy-image}
To make enabling image upload in CKEditor 5 a breeze, by default all builds include the {@link module:easy-image/easyimage~EasyImage EasyImage plugin}. It integrates with the Easy Image service provided by CKEditor Cloud Services. Enabling it is straightforward and the results are immediate:
Configure CKEditor 5 (see {@link module:cloud-services/cloudservices~CloudServicesConfig CloudServicesConfig}):
ClassicEditor
.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
cloudServices: {
tokenUrl: 'https://example.com/cs-token-endpoint',
uploadUrl: 'https://your-organization-id.cke-cs.com/easyimage/upload/'
}
} )
.then( ... )
.catch( ... );
This is all. At this point, image upload will be automatically enabled in your application.
If you are having troubles with setting up Easy Image, please contact us.
Another great feature introduced with CKEditor 5 is the ability to have responsive images in the rich-text editor content. With a single image upload, several optimized versions of that image are created, each for a different size of the display. All this is transparent to the end user who uploaded the image.
{@img assets/img/responsive-images.svg 550 The visualization of the responsive images approach for CKEditor 5 WYSIWYG editor.}
Responsive images have two main advantages over the "traditional" image delivery:
They save the data transfer. There are countless device and screen size combinations that can be used to display images in your application (smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.). You do not need to serve the same full–scale images to all of them, though.
Using Easy Image guarantees only the particular size variant corresponding to the user's screen size is served, minimizing the amount of data transferred to the client. For large images, this can save up to 90% of the transferred data — see it yourself!
They load faster. Because only the image matching the size of the screen is transferred, in most cases it can be loaded and displayed much faster than a "regular" full–scale image. The faster it loads, the sooner the users can see it, which greatly improves the user experience of your application. You no longer need to wait ages for high–resolution photos to load on a tiny smartphone screen.
Responsive images delivered by the Easy Image service are transparent to your application. Once uploaded, the image appears in the editor content as a "regular" image but with some additional attributes like the srcset.
The srcset attribute specifies the image variants dedicated for the various screen sizes for the web browser to choose from (360px, 720px, 1080px, 1440px, etc.). For instance the image.jpg file uploaded by the user will have the following markup:
<figure class="image">
<img
src="https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg"
srcset="https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg/w_360 360w,
https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg/w_720 720w,
https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg/w_1080 1080w,
...
https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg/w_2880 2880w,
https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg/w_3240 3240w,
https://cdn.cke-cs.com/images/image.jpg/w_3543 3543w"
sizes="100vw"
width="...">
<figcaption>...</figcaption>
</figure>
The variety of the image sizes in the srcset attribute allows the web browser to choose the best one for the particular screen size. As a result, it loads faster and with less data transferred. See the detailed {@link @cs guides/easy-image/service-details Easy Image service documentation} to learn more about responsive images and other features offered by the service.
Check out the {@link features/image-upload comprehensive "Image upload" guide} to learn more about different ways of uploading images in CKEditor 5.
See the {@link features/image Image feature} guide to find out more about handling images in CKEditor 5.