starter-blog/data/blog/guide-to-using-images-in-nextjs.mdx
2021-01-09 17:50:45 +08:00

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---
title: Images in Next.js
date: '2020-11-11'
tags: ['next js', 'guide']
draft: false
summary: 'In this article we introduce adding images in the tailwind starter blog and the benefits and limitations of the next/image component.'
---
# Introduction
The tailwind starter blog has out of the box support for [Next.js's built-in image component](https://nextjs.org/docs/api-reference/next/image) and automatically swaps out default image tags in markdown or mdx documents to use the Image component provided.
# Usage
To use in a new page route / javascript file, simply import the image component and call it e.g.
```js
import Image from 'next/image'
function Home() {
return (
<>
<h1>My Homepage</h1>
<Image src="/me.png" alt="Picture of the author" width={500} height={500} />
<p>Welcome to my homepage!</p>
</>
)
}
export default Home
```
For a markdown file, the default image tag can be used and the default `img` tag gets replaced by the `Image` component in the build process.
Assuming we have a file called `ocean.jpg` in `data/img/ocean.jpg`, the following line of code would generate the optimized image.
```
![ocean](/static/images/ocean.jpg)
```
Alternatively, since we are using mdx, we can just use the image component directly! Note, that you would have to provide a fixed width and height. The `img` tag method parses the dimension automatically.
```js
<Image alt="ocean" src="/static/images/ocean.jpg" width={256} height={128} />
```
_Note_: If you try to save the image, it is in webp format, if your browser supports it!
![ocean](/static/images/ocean.jpeg)
<p>
Photo by{' '}
<a href="https://unsplash.com/@yucar?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">
YUCAR FotoGrafik
</a>{' '}
on{' '}
<a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sea?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">
Unsplash
</a>
</p>
# Benefits
- Smaller image size with Webp (~30% smaller than jpeg)
- Responsive images - the correct image size is served based on the user's viewport
- Lazy loading - images load as they are scrolled to the viewport
- Avoids [Cumulative Layout Shift](https://web.dev/cls/)
- Optimization on demand instead of build-time - no increase in build time!
# Limitations
- Due to the reliance of `next/image`, unless you are using an external image CDN like Cloudinary or Imgix, it is practically required to use Vercel for hosting. This is because the component acts like a serverless function that calls a highly optimized image CDN.
If you do not want to be tied to Vercel, you can remove `imgToJsx` in `remarkPlugins` in `lib/mdx.js`. This would avoid substituting the default `img` tag.
Alternatively, one could wait for image optimization at build time to be supported. A different library, [next-optimized-images](https://github.com/cyrilwanner/next-optimized-images) does that, although it requires transforming the images through webpack which is not done here.
- Images from external links are not passed through `next/image`
- All images have to be stored in the `public` folder e.g `/static/images/ocean.jpeg`