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#42839 Feature request: Image selection on a per article basis as an option

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Environment Information

Joomla! version
6.0.3
PHP version
8.3
SocialMagick version
3.0.1

Latest post by AndrewSmith on Thursday, 26 March 2026 06:28 CDT

AndrewSmith

Hi there,

With this site we film speaker presentations at our events and then make them available online.  From initially video only, we then have transcripts made and added in as article text, and this also includes the PowerPoint slides if applicable.  You can see an example here: https://votingmatters.com.au/presentations/straya/australian-lobby-group

In the site we use a Joomlart template which has special "video" articles in addition to the normal text ones, and this in turn gives a special layout to pages in the site where videos are published.  

For each video/article, our image assets will be: intro image, large image, video image (used as a preview in the "video" article where the video embed is (prior to play button click), and also a poster image that is specially prepared for YouTube.

What I would really like to be able to do is to have the OG image selectable on a individual article override / customisation level.  That is, I would have an "extra image" selector in the Open Graph tab in an article where I can then point it to the specific YouTube poster image that was created.  This would enable the OG preview to match the carefully crafted poster image seen on YouTube and therefore a consistent experience.

Hope this makes sense.  Thanks in advance.

Andrew

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Look at the Extra Image documentation. You can use the Custom Field option with the Overlay display layer and no text.

Create a Field of type Media for the content category your articles are in. Let's call it Poster Image with a name of poster_image. You can even add a description saying that this will be used for OpenGraph.

For each article, set the Poster Image field to the poster image you want to use.

Create a new SocialMagick template. Set the Extra Image Source to Custom Field, set the Extra Image Field Name to poster_image, and Display Layer to Overlay. This will put this image at the top of the composition stack.

In the Text tab set Overlay Text to No to disable any kind of text overlay.

This template will then use the image you set up in the Poster Image field of the article as your OpenGraph image.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

AndrewSmith

Thank you Nicholas.

I'm going to have a crack at this and get back to you with how it went.

Andrew

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