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In my opinion, the MSE community could benefit a lot from being able to scale down images in answers and questions. Often images get unintentionally huge, which prevents users from seeing as much information as desired at once. It is also tiring to scroll up and down to get to the different parts at the question. Currently images and words aren't working well-enough together, and I'd like to fix it.

After talking to @robjohn and @Ted Shifrin I came to the conclusion to post my suggestion here on Meta. Quoting @robjohn:

I am not sure how that would go over with the devs, but definitely something could be suggested in meta.

I am imagining simple commands, for example scale = 0.5, which then scales the picture to a half of its original size.

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  • $\begingroup$ For geometry questions, e.g., and questions/answers which include graphs, I'd support this. But too many links to unnecessary pictures/images are posted, rather than typing questions in mathjax. So I'm reluctant to make it any easier to post pictures, or to enable more pictures being posted. $\endgroup$
    – amWhy
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 17:24
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    $\begingroup$ Some options for scaling images are given here: Thumbnail image on Stack Overflow. In particular, for images uploaded via the option in the editor, it is possible to append a special symbol (s or b or m etc.) to the image URL to adjust the size of the displayed image. Does that help? $\endgroup$
    – user865419
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 17:32
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    $\begingroup$ @amWhy I agree. How about making "scaling images" a privilige? I think there is no disadvantage with this suggestion. $\endgroup$
    – vitamin d
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 17:33
  • $\begingroup$ @anonymous_user Can I use those symbols on every StackExchange site? $\endgroup$
    – vitamin d
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 17:35
  • $\begingroup$ @vitamind Yes. The linked question only talks about SO because it was asked over 10 years ago. But I'm sure it works network-wide. $\endgroup$
    – user865419
    Commented Mar 24, 2021 at 17:36
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    $\begingroup$ @vitamind if scaling images was a privilege, then people would complain about the lack of basic functionality for new users. $\endgroup$
    – user400188
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 3:23
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    $\begingroup$ Related. Linking to make all the suggestions available to all readers. $\endgroup$
    – Jyrki Lahtonen
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 19:11

1 Answer 1

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There is a fairly workable solution right now using html, though I agree that a more intuitive method would be preferable. First, you have to upload the image as normal, and get the imgur link, for example. https://i.sstatic.net/m2uYu.png If you click on that, you'll see it's way too large. You can then include the image in your post scaled to any factor by typing

<img src="https://i.sstatic.net/m2uYu.png" width="200">

The syntax is very finnicky; you must have no spaces between the src,=, and the link address, which must be in quotes, and same for width, =, and "400" (this is why I agree the site could use a better solution). Here is the result:

Appending m or s to the imgur link is not an acceptable solution, since it can create a huge drop in image quality. Here is the result of ![](https://i.sstatic.net/m2uYum.png):

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    $\begingroup$ Related to preserving the larger image's quality, using the thumbnail as clickable link to the full-size image. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Commented Mar 26, 2021 at 14:39
  • $\begingroup$ @hardmath I believe the clickable link doesnt work now. Whenever I hover my mouse on the image, it does not appear clickable. Although I did it previously on many answers now it seems to have stopped. $\endgroup$
    – Anindya Prithvi
    Commented Apr 2, 2021 at 6:00
  • $\begingroup$ @AnindyaPrithvi: It still works for me in that meta post I linked to. Does it not work there for you, or can you link to another post where it has stopped working? $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Commented Apr 2, 2021 at 14:15
  • $\begingroup$ Does this work with GIF too? $\endgroup$
    – Delrius Euphoria
    Commented Apr 4, 2021 at 16:35
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    $\begingroup$ It does, try it out with <img src="https://i.sstatic.net/9MBvm.gif" width="600"> @CoolCloud. $\endgroup$
    – Mike Earnest
    Commented Apr 4, 2021 at 18:35

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