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Cover image for Create responsive images with gulp-sharp-responsive
Khalyomede
Khalyomede

Posted on

Create responsive images with gulp-sharp-responsive

#javascript #node #tutorial #productivity

Hello everyone, and welcome to this tutorial. Today I would like to introduce a new plugin for Gulp that I created to optimize images for our web browser users.

Introducting gulp-sharp-responsive

gulp-sharp-responsive is based on the Sharp NPM package, a fast image processing library, and aims to simplify this tedious task. Making images responsive and declined for differents format becomes simple because we only have to configure it and the rest is done automatically for us.

Context

For this tutorial, let's imagine we have the following folder:

.
├── src/
│   └── img/
│       └── lion.jpg
├── .gitignore
├── gulpfile.js
└── package.json
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Let's say We want to output our lion.jpg image into the folder dist/img. We also would like to have images in differents sizes:

  • 640 (mobile)
  • 768 (tablet)
  • 1024 (desktop)

And differents formats:

  • jpeg
  • webp
  • avif

Using gulp-sharp-responsive

To this purpose, here is how you can use this library.

Installation

First, let's install Gulp and this plugin:

npm install --save-dev gulp gulp-sharp-responsive
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Usage

Next, head on your gulpfile.js file and append this code:

// gulpfile.js
const { src, dest } = require("gulp");
const sharpResponsive = require("gulp-sharp-responsive");
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Then, let's write our "img" task:

// gulpfile.js
const { src, dest } = require("gulp");
const sharpResponsive = require("gulp-sharp-responsive");

const img = () => src("src/img/*.jpg")
  .pipe(sharpResponsive({
    formats: [
      // jpeg
      { width: 640, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
      { width: 768, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
      { width: 1024, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
      // webp
      { width: 640, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
      { width: 768, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
      { width: 1024, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
      // avif
      { width: 640, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
      { width: 768, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
      { width: 1024, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
    ]
  }))
  .pipe(dest("dist/img"));
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Finally, let's expose this task so that we can use it through npm run img

// gulpfile.js
const { src, dest } = require("gulp");
const sharpResponsive = require("gulp-sharp-responsive");

const img = () => src("src/img/*.jpg")
  .pipe(sharpResponsive({
    formats: [
      // jpeg
      { width: 640, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
      { width: 768, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
      { width: 1024, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
      // webp
      { width: 640, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
      { width: 768, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
      { width: 1024, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
      // avif
      { width: 640, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
      { width: 768, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
      { width: 1024, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
    ]
  }))
  .pipe(dest("dist/img"));

module.exports = {
  img,
};
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// package.json
{
  "scripts": {
    "img": "gulp img"
  }
}
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Now, let's run this task once. In your terminal, run this command:

npm run img
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You should see something printed in the console like this:

$ npm run img

> img     
> gulp img

[14:11:00] Using gulpfile /home/khalyomede/gulpfile.js
[14:11:01] Starting 'build'...
[14:11:01] Starting 'img'...
[14:11:02] Finished 'img' after 1.92 s
[14:11:02] Finished 'build' after 1.93 s
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And if we inspect our folder tree this is what we should get now:

.
├── dist/
│   └── img/
│       ├── lions-lg.avif
│       ├── lions-lg.jpg
│       ├── lions-lg.webp
│       ├── lions-md.avif
│       ├── lions-md.jpg
│       ├── lions-md.webp
│       ├── lions-sm.avif
│       ├── lions-sm.jpg
│       └── lions-sm.webp
├── src/
│   └── img/
│       └── lion.jpg
├── .gitignore
├── gulpfile.js
└── package.json
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Conclusion

Image responsiveness can be of a good use when you want to improve your web page speed using this HTML technique:

<picture>
  <!-- avif -->
  <source srcset="/img/lion-sm.avif" media="(max-width: 640px)" type="image/avif" />
  <source srcset="/img/lion-md.avif" media="(max-width: 768px)" type="image/avif" />
  <source srcset="/img/lion-lg.avif" media="(max-width: 1024px)" type="image/avif" />
  <!-- webp -->
  <source srcset="/img/lion-sm.webp" media="(max-width: 640px)" type="image/webp" />
  <source srcset="/img/lion-md.webp" media="(max-width: 768px)" type="image/webp" />
  <source srcset="/img/lion-lg.webp" media="(max-width: 1024px)" type="image/webp" />
  <!-- jpeg -->
  <source srcset="/img/lion-sm.jpeg" media="(max-width: 640px)" type="image/jpeg" />
  <source srcset="/img/lion-md.jpeg" media="(max-width: 768px)" type="image/jpeg" />
  <source srcset="/img/lion-lg.jpeg" media="(max-width: 1024px)" type="image/jpeg" />
  <!-- original -->
  <img src="/img/lion.jpeg" class="img-responsive" alt="A lion in the jungle." />
</picture>
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This way, you are asking the browser:

  • To load the most modern image first
  • Load an image that fits the viewport width
  • Fallback to the <img> if a browser doesn't support it

If you check the sizes of each files, we can see users will benefit from newest files format small sizes:

Image Size Weight
lion.jpg Original 1 330 Ko
lions-lg.avif 1024px 52 Ko
lions-lg.jpg 1024px 141 Ko
lions-lg.webp 1024px 118 Ko
lions-md.avif 768px 30 Ko
lions-md.jpg 768px 81 Ko
lions-md.webp 768px 67 Ko
lions-sm.avif 640px 23 Ko
lions-sm.jpeg 640px 60 Ko
lions-sm.webp 640px 51 Ko

Learn more in this detail post:

khalyomede image

Speed up your web page loading with WebP

Khalyomede ・ Feb 25 '19 ・ 3 min read

#webdev #html #image #performance

Thanks for reading this tutorial, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writting for Dev.to!

You can learn more about this library, like how to keep the original file in the output images and much more!

GitHub logo khalyomede / gulp-sharp-responsive

A gulp plugin to generate responsives images.

gulp-sharp-responsive

A gulp plugin to generate responsives images.

Summary

About

I make web apps and I often need to generate images of multi formats and size from a single image. For example, an image "lion.jpeg", that is declined like this:

  • lion-sm.jpeg
  • lion-sm.webp
  • lion-sm.avif
  • lion-lg.jpeg
  • lion-lg.webp
  • lion-lg.avif

Sharp can do this, and since I use Gulp for my everyday tasks, I created a plugin to automatize this task.

Features

  • Based on Sharp
  • Takes options to generate images by sizes and format
  • Supports theses formats
    • jpeg
    • png
    • gif
    • webp
    • avif
    • heif
    • tiff
  • Can pass Sharp specific options to customize even more the image generation
  • Written in TypeScript, so you get type hints for the options

Installation

In your terminal:

npm install --save-dev gulp-sharp-responsive
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With Yarn:

yarn add --dev gulp-sharp-responsive
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Examples

Sidenote: all the following example uses the TS version of gulpfile. This is why you will see…

View on GitHub

Happy optimizations!

Discussion (6)

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samsaltspringbc profile image
Sam Miller • • Edited on

For those how might be curious, to group images into output directories named after their filename base, filename excluding suffixes, I used the gulp plugin "rename" (npmjs.com/package/gulp-rename) as in the following. Helpful when dealing with a lot of images.

function sharpImg() {
    return src('_sort/**/*.jpg')
        .pipe(rename(function (path) {
            path.dirname += "/" + path.basename;
        }))
        .pipe(sharpResponsive({
            formats: [
                // jpeg
                { width: 640, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
                { width: 768, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
                { width: 1024, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
                // webp
                { width: 640, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
                { width: 768, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
                { width: 1024, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
                // avif
                { width: 640, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
                { width: 768, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
                { width: 1024, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
            ]
        }))
        .pipe(dest('_sorted'))
}
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samsaltspringbc profile image
Sam Miller • • Edited on

Rather than specifying a media condition for each source, could the above html example be simplified to the following, letting the browser choose based on the widths given in the srcset element (see blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/1...)? I haven't tested it, yet.

<picture>
<source type="image/avif" sizes=”100vw” srcset="/img/lion-sm.avif 640w, /img/lion-md.avif 768w, /img/lion-lg.avif 1024" />
<source type="image/webp" sizes=”100vw” srcset="/img/lion-sm.webp 640w, /img/lion-md.webp 768w, /img/lion-lg.webp 1024" />
<img sizes="100vw" src="/img/lion.jpeg" srcset="/img/lion-sm.jpeg 640w, /img/lion-md.jpeg 768w, /img/lion-lg.jpeg 1024" alt="lion" class="img-responsive">
</picture>
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samsaltspringbc profile image
Sam Miller • • Edited on

Thanks for the great gulp tutorial. There isn't a lot of such gulp tutorials online so much appreciated. However, I am not getting any result from running the plugin. I am wondering if you might have any suggestions.

I've installed sharp and this plugin, "npm install sharp gulp-sharp-responsive --save-dev", following the instructions on the npm website (npmjs.com/package/gulp-sharp-respo...) and your tutorial.

I tried this:
...
const { src, dest } = require("gulp");
const sharpResponsive = require("gulp-sharp-responsive");

const img = () => src('src/assets/images/process/*.jpg')
.pipe(sharpResponsive({
formats: [
// jpeg
{ width: 640, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
{ width: 768, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
{ width: 1024, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
// webp
{ width: 640, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
{ width: 768, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
{ width: 1024, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
// avif
{ width: 640, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
{ width: 768, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
{ width: 1024, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
]
}))
.pipe(dest('test'))

module.exports = {
img,
};
...
with this in my package.json:
...
"scripts": {
"img": "gulp img"
},
...
Alternatively, I tried the classic function approach but got the same result.
...
function sharpImages() {
return src('src/assets/images/process/*.jpg')
.pipe(sharpResponsive({
formats: [
// jpeg
{ width: 640, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
{ width: 768, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
{ width: 1024, format: "jpeg", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
// webp
{ width: 640, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
{ width: 768, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
{ width: 1024, format: "webp", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
// avif
{ width: 640, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-sm" } },
{ width: 768, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-md" } },
{ width: 1024, format: "avif", rename: { suffix: "-lg" } },
]
}))
.pipe(dest('test'))
}

exports.sharpImages = sharpImages;
...
In both cases, when I run "npm run img" or "gulp sharpImages", all I get is this in the terminal:
[14:12:35] Starting 'sharpImages'...
[14:12:35] Finished 'sharpImages' after 227 ms

No test directory, no images, nothing. I am using node v16.15.0. Any suggestions?

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khalyomede profile image
Khalyomede Author • • Edited on

Thanks so much for the appreciation 🙏

Could you please give me a public repository with your code? So I can give this a try on my machine to see what's wrong

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samsaltspringbc profile image
Sam Miller •

Hi, so I thought I would give it another try, and this time it worked! Perhaps, I didn't have a dependency installed or perhaps I had a syntax error in the src url? In your tutorial, you don't mention installing sharp via "npm install sharp". Is that a requirement, or does "npm install --save-dev gulp-sharp-responsive" automatically install all the needed dependencies? Thanks for the awesome plugin!

Thread Thread
khalyomede profile image
Khalyomede Author • • Edited on

Hi, I'm so glad it finally worked for you!

Indeed installing solely the package will automatically require all necessary dependencies, including "sharp". Maybe your issue was during the compilation of sharp itself, I know I had lots of random issues (because it needs to recompile sharp from sources, and if for example the network is fluctuating or a filesystem issue occurs, the whole process finishes but then the executable is corrupted). That's my best guess...

At least now you're good to go, have fun with it!

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