What are the benefits of using the Upload/Embed Image Tool?
The purpose of the Upload/Embed Image (U/EI) tool is to allow you to work with images inside of Canvas rather than pulling them into an external editor. Canvas lets you upload an image but it does not facilitate cropping or resizing. This results in a lot of 5000+ pixel images being stored inside of Canvas that will never be displayed that large and slow down the loading of content. In its original version, it was just to help crop the Front Page banner image to the correct proportions providing a consistent style to Utah State University courses but then we decided to extend that functionality to work with any image.
For years it was also the only way for students to upload an image to their user files and embed it directly in the rich content editor. Prior to developing it, students had to navigate to their user files folder in Canvas and upload an image then return to the assignment or discussion to embed it. Functions available in our U/EI tool which are currently not available in Canvas' native Embed Image tool are:
- select images from Pexels
- crop images
- select preset ratios for image size or ratio
- see a live preview
- rename the file
- overwrite a current file
- download the edited image to your computer to use outside of Canvas
- save as the course image
- flip horizontally or vertically
- rotate image
- zoom in or out of an image
