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Using an image caption in Markdown Jekyll

I am hosting a Jekyll Blog on Github and write my posts with Markdown. When I am adding images, I do it the following way:

![name of the image](http://link.com/image.jpg)

![name of the image](http://link.com/image.jpg)

This then shows the image in the text.

However, how can I tell Markdown to add a caption which is presented below or above the image?

9 Answers
9

If you don't want to use any plugins (which means you can push it to GitHub directly without generating the site first), you can create a new file named image.html in _includes:

image.html

_includes

<table class="image">
<caption align="bottom"> include.description </caption>
<tr><td><img src=" include.url " alt=" include.description "/></td></tr>
</table>


(and obviously I am not a designer. You should probably use CSS instead of a table to make your image align properly)

And then display the image from your markdown with:

% include image.html url="/images/my-cat.jpg" description="My cat, Robert Downey Jr." %


site_root

src=" site.url_root ...

site.url

<figure class="image"><img src=" include.url " alt=" include.description "><figcaption> include.description </figcaption></figure>

include image.html

% for image in page.images %

I know this is an old question but I thought I'd still share my method of adding image captions. You won't be able to use the caption or figcaption tags, but this would be a simple alternative without using any plugins.

caption

figcaption

In your markdown, you can wrap your caption with the emphasis tag and put it directly underneath the image without inserting a new line like so:

!(path_to_image)
*image_caption*


This would generate the following HTML:

<p>
<img src="path_to_image" alt>
<em>image_caption</em>
</p>


Then in your CSS you can style it using the following selector without interfering with other em tags on the page:

em

img + em


Note that you must not have a blank line between the image and the caption because that would instead generate:

<p>
<img src="path_to_image" alt>
</p>
<p>
<em>image_caption</em>
</p>


You can also use whatever tag you want other than em. Just make sure there is a tag, otherwise you won't be able to style it.

em

+

img + em display: block; text-align: center;

You can use table for this. It works fine.

| ![space-1.jpg](http://www.storywarren.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/space-1.jpg) |
|:--:|
| *Space* |


Result:

If you're only adding the occasional caption and you want to use the more semantic <figure> and <figcaption> consider just adding that html into your markdown document:

<figure>

<figcaption>

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit...

<figure>
<img src="site.url/assets/image.jpg" alt="my alt text"/>
<figcaption>This is my caption text.</figcaption>
</figure>

Vestibulum eu vulputate magna...


It's a lot simpler than messing with plugins and Markdown encourages embedding HTML, so it will display just fine.

You can try to use pandoc as your converter. Here's a jekyll plugin to implement this. Pandoc will be able to add a figure caption the same as your alt attribute automatically.

pandoc

alt

But you have to push the compiled site because github doesn't allow plugins in Github pages for security.

A slight riff on the top voted answer that I found to be a little more explicit is to use the jekyll syntax for adding a class to something and then style it that way.

So in the post you would have:

![My image](/images/my-image.png)

:.image-caption
*The caption for my image*


And then in your CSS file you can do something like this:

.image-caption {
text-align: center;
font-size: .8rem;
color: light-grey;


Comes out looking good!

Andrew's @andrew-wei answer works great. You can also chain a few together, depending on what you are trying to do. This, for example, gets you an image with alt, title and caption with a line break and bold and italics in different parts of the caption:

img + br + strong margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 7px; font-style:italic; font-size: 12px;
img + br + strong + em margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 7px; font-size: 12px; font-style:italic;


With the following <img> markdown:

<img>

![description](https://img.jpg "description")
***Image:*** *description*


Here's the simplest (but not prettiest) solution: make a table around the whole thing. There are obviously scaling issues, and this is why I give my example with the HTML so that you can modify the image size easily. This worked for me.

| <img src="" alt="" style="width: 400px;"/> |
| My Caption |


There are two semantically correct solutions to this question:

1. Using a plugin

I've tried a couple of plugins doing this and my favourite is jekyll-figure.

jekyll-figure

jekyll-figure

One way to install jekyll-figure is to add gem "jekyll-figure" to your Gemfile in your plugins group.

jekyll-figure

gem "jekyll-figure"

Then run bundle install from your terminal window.

bundle install

jekyll-figure

Simply wrap your markdown in % figure % and % endfigure % tags.

% figure %

% endfigure %

You caption goes in the opening % figure % tag, and you can even style it with markdown!

% figure %

Example:

% figure caption:"Le logo de **Jekyll** et son clin d'oeil à Robert Louis Stevenson" %
![Le logo de Jekyll](/assets/images/2018-08-07-jekyll-logo.png)
% endfigure %


Now that your images and captions are semantically correct, you can apply CSS as you wish to:

figure

figure img

figcaption

2. Creating a custom include

You'll need to create an image.html file in your _includes folder, and include it using Liquid in Markdown.

image.html

_includes

Create the image.html document in your _includes folder :

image.html

<!-- _includes/image.html -->
<figure>
% if include.url %
<a href=" include.url ">
% endif %
<img
% if include.srcabs %
src=" include.srcabs "
% else %
src=" site.baseurl /assets/images/ include.src "
% endif %
alt=" include.alt ">
% if include.url %
</a>
% endif %
% if include.caption %
<figcaption> include.caption </figcaption>
% endif %
</figure>


An image in /assets/images with a caption:

/assets/images

This is [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com)'s logo :

% include image.html
src="jekyll-logo.png" <!-- image filename (placed in /assets/images) -->
alt="Jekyll's logo" <!-- alt text -->
caption="This is Jekyll's logo, featuring Dr. Jekyll's serum!" <!-- Caption -->
%


An (external) image using an absolute URL: (change src="" to srcabs="")

src=""

srcabs=""

This is [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com)'s logo :

% include image.html
srcabs="https://jekyllrb.com/img/logo-2x.png" <!-- absolute URL to image file -->
alt="Jekyll's logo" <!-- alt text -->
caption="This is Jekyll's logo, featuring Dr. Jekyll's serum!" <!-- Caption -->
%


A clickable image: (add url="" argument)

url=""

This is [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com)'s logo :

% include image.html
src="https://jekyllrb.com/img/logo-2x.png" <!-- absolute URL to image file -->
url="https://jekyllrb.com" <!-- destination url -->
alt="Jekyll's logo" <!-- alt text -->
caption="This is Jekyll's logo, featuring Dr. Jekyll's serum!" <!-- Caption -->
%


An image without a caption:

This is [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com)'s logo :

% include image.html
src="https://jekyllrb.com/img/logo-2x.png" <!-- absolute URL to image file -->
alt="Jekyll's logo" <!-- alt text -->
%


Now that your images and captions are semantically correct, you can apply CSS as you wish to:

figure

figure img

figcaption

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