How to Use Images in Your Scrivener Projects: The Basics

While Scrivener’s main features revolve around planning, writing, and revising long-form writing projects, the app also allows you to use images in your projects. You can use images in your text, store them in your Research folder, add them to the Synopsis field of your files, use them as covers when you compile your projects as ebooks, modify Scrivener’s interface with images, and more. In this article, we’ll look at the basics of using images in your Scrivener projects; in a future article, we’ll look at more advanced uses of images in Scrivener.

Store images in the Research folder

Scrivener’s Research folder is a place where you can collect files that you have collected while researching your project. You can place images here, as well as PDF files, videos, webpages, and much more. You can store images that you want to use to remind you about settings or characters or inspire you as you work on your project, but which will not end up in the finished text.

To add an image to the Research folder, just drag the file from your computer. This could be a photo you’ve taken or an image from a website. You can also drag images from some web pages to the Research folder; not all websites may not allow images to be dragged or copied.

You can select any of these images in the Research folder to view them. And you can add them to your text files later if you decide that you want to use them that way.

Use images in the Synopsis field

The Synopsis field in Scrivener’s Inspector allows you to enter some text that summarizes each of the files in your Binder. But you can also place images in that field. You may want to do this as a reminder of a location or character in a chapter or scene, and these images display in the Inspector and on the Corkboard.

When you add an image to the Synopsis field, you can also add text, and you can switch between the two by clicking the small icon above the Synopsis section. You have some options as to how the image displays; right-click or Control-click an image to display a contextual menu where you can scale the image, adjust alignment, or remove it by choosing Clear Image.

Add images to text files

You may want to add images to your text files temporarily, to view a location or person who inspires your novel, or you may be writing a non-fiction work or thesis where you need images or graphics for the project. Scrivener supports the main image formats, such as TIFF, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, etc. There are two main ways to add images to text files.

Drag images to text files The easiest way to add an image to a text file is to drag it to the location in the file where you want to place it. For example, you can drag an image after a paragraph if you want it to appear in that location. Press Return after the end of the paragraph so the image is on its own line, and not directly after the text.

Choose Insert > Image from File Position your cursor where you want the image to be added, then choose Insert > Image from File and select the image on your computer. Scrivener adds the image at the cursor location.

Adjust images in text files

After you insert an image in a text file, you can adjust the size of that image. Double-click the image and a dialogue displays allowing you to change its size in pixels. You can drag the Horizontal or Vertical sliders, or you can enter a pixel size, and you can choose to lock the aspect ratio, which means that you only need to change the length or width of the image for it to scale correctly.

Add images to use as backgrounds

You can also add images to use as backgrounds for the Editor, Corkboard, or Composition Mode. To do this for the Corkboard, go to File > Settings (Mac) or File > Options (Windows), click the Appearance tab, and then click Corkboard. Click the Colors tab, then click any of the three menus. Each menu offers a Custom Background option; choose this and select a file. Note that you can also choose a built-in background that looks like a real corkboard.

You can change the background of the Editor; you may find it relaxing to write on a background that looks like paper, grass, or water. You can add an image file to fill the background. From the Appearance tab of Settings or Options, click Main Editor, then click Editor. Click Choose Texture, then select a file.

When you set a texture file as a background, the image file you use is repeated across the screen. As such, these files need to be designed to repeat without showing lines. Also, these files cannot be more than one megabyte. Scrivener doesn’t offer texture files, but you can find such files online. Just search for something like “paper texture image.”

You can also set a texture for Fixed Width Background, which is what you see at the sides of the Editor when in page view.

And you can set a texture for the Composition Mode Editor and Background. In Settings or Options, go to the Appearance tab, then click Composition Mode in the sidebar. Click Editor or Screen Background, and choose a texture as explained above for the Main Editor.

These are some of the basics of using images in Scrivener: adding them to your files, using them for synopses, or using them as backgrounds in the Scrivener interface. In a future article, we will look at some advanced uses of images in Scrivener.