Summary

Deco provides Image, Picture, and Source components to work with images. These components add responsive patterns to speed up your site. To add an image to your site:

Add the deco image components (<Image/>, <Source>, <Picture>) to your code

Style the components with CSS until you achieve the desired appearance

Set the width and height attributes of the component.

The deco components already provide:

Responsive images for all screen sizes

Preloading tags to improve LCP

Image processing to optimize image size

Image or Picture

There are two components for displaying images: <Image> and <Picture>. The appropriate component depends on your use case:

<Image> displays an image (internally using <img>) and is useful for images that always have the same aspect ratio (width vs height) regardless of screen size.

<Picture> defines images that can vary in size according to the screen resolution.

Adding an image

Using the appropriate component, style it with Tailwind classes. It is mandatory to set the src and use the height/width props:

import Image from "apps/website/components/Image.tsx";

export default function MeuComponente() {
  return (
    <Image
      src="https://example.com/image.png"
      class="w-full h-full object-cover"
      width={800}
      height={1200}
    />
  );
}

The width/height does not change the size of the image on the screen as it is styled by CSS. These attributes don't even need to be the original size of the image. The height and width are present to allow the server and browser to choose the appropriate image to download based on the user's screen resolution.

Adding a Picture

Below, you will find a minimal example that renders an image for desktop and another one for mobile devices.

import { Picture, Source } from "apps/website/components/Picture.tsx";

function MeuComponente() {
  return (
    <Picture>
      <Source
        media="(max-width: 768px)"
        src="https://example.com/image-mobile.png"
        width={270}
        height={377}
      />
      <Source
        media="(min-width: 768px)"
        src="https://example.com/image-desktop.png"
        width={800}
        height={1200}
      />
      <img
        src="https://example.com/image-desktop.png"
        class="w-full h-full object-cover"
      />
    </Picture>
  );
}

Note that you should use the <img> tag inside Picture, not the <Image> component. Also note that the src attribute in the <img> tag is REQUIRED and should receive the larger image, in this case, the desktop image.

The example above renders the /image-mobile.png image for screen sizes up to 768px wide. For larger screen sizes, the /image-desktop.png image will be rendered.

To style this image, add classes to the <img> tag. For example, to make the image fill the available space, as shown in the example above.

Finding the width and height properties

The width and height attributes of the image can be confusing, even for experienced developers. This confusion arises from the fact that these attributes DO NOT change the final size of the rendered image on the screen. Instead, they affect the image that the browser will download in a responsive image scenario. Choosing appropriate width and height values is key to downloading a small image for good LCP results.

To find a good width and height value:

Open your website and inspect the image element.
Set the viewport to the desired size (412px for mobile devices or 1440px for desktop).
Hover over the image tag. You should see something like:
Voilà! A good width and height value is available in the "Rendered size" attribute. In this case, the width is 270px and the height is 377px.

Loading images in an optimized way (improving LCP)

For a good LCP, not only do you need to send small payloads, but you also need to load them in the correct order, prioritizing those that are visible on the screen over other elements (below the fold). A good heuristic is:

Prioritize the LCP image.
Lazy load all other images.

Fortunately, the <Image> and <Picture> components from Deco help us achieve this behavior. Start by identifying the largest element on the screen (LCP). Then, open the component's code and check if:

The preload attribute is set.
The loading attribute is set to 'eager'.
The fetchPriority attribute is set to 'high'.

For example, for an <Image/> component:

import Image from "apps/website/components/Image.tsx";

export default function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <Image
      src="https://example.com/image.png"
      width={270}
      height={377}
      preload
      loading="eager"
      fetchPriority="high"
    />
  );
}

For a <Picture/>:

import { Picture, Source } from "apps/website/components/Picture.tsx";

function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <Picture preload>
      <Source
        media="(max-width: 768px)"
        src="https://example.com/image-mobile.png"
        width={270}
        height={377}
      />
      <Source
        media="(min-width: 768px)"
        src="https://example.com/image-desktop.png"
        width={800}
        height={1200}
      />
      <img
        loading="eager"
        fetchPriority="high"
        src="https://example.com/image-desktop.png"
        class="w-full h-full object-cover"
      />
    </Picture>
  );
}

Make sure that other images do not have the preload attribute and have the loading="lazy" and fetchPriority="low" attributes. By adding these configurations, you will optimize the image loading to improve LCP.

Tip: The final page should have only one preloaded image. Preloading multiple images worsens the LCP score. To verify that only one image is being preloaded, check that there is only one <link rel="preload"/> tag.

Optimizing images