How to Create, Optimize and Add a Featured Image or Post Thumbnail in WordPress

A featured image (also called a post thumbnail) represents your post or page visually. It typically appears at the top of the article, on archive pages, and when your post is shared on social media. A good featured image makes your content far more clickable.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to design a featured image, optimize it for the web, and set it in WordPress.

Step 1: Create your featured image

You don’t need Photoshop. Photopea (photopea.com) is a free, browser-based editor that handles everything we’ll do here.

1. Go to photopea.com and click New Project.
2. Set a custom size of 1280 × 720 px — a good standard size for featured images — and click Create.
3. Add a background: use one of your own photos or a free stock image from a site like Pixabay (File → Open & Place), then scale it to fill the canvas.
4. Add your headline with the text tool. Adjust size, font, and color in the top bar until it’s bold and readable.
5. If the text is hard to read over the image, add a semi-transparent shape behind it: select the shape tool, set fill to black with no stroke, draw a rectangle across the canvas, then lower its opacity and drag the layer below the text layer.
6. When you’re happy, go to File → Export As and choose JPG or PNG. Set quality to around 75–80% — this keeps the file size low while looking sharp.

Step 2: Optimize your featured image

Search engines and visitors both punish slow pages, and oversized images are the most common cause. Before uploading, run your image through TinyPNG (tinypng.com):

1. Open tinypng.com and drop your image into the box.
2. Wait for the compression to finish, then download the optimized file.

TinyPNG also has a free WordPress plugin that automatically optimizes new uploads — worth installing if you publish images regularly.

Step 3: Add the featured image in WordPress

1. Edit your post (see our beginner’s guide to adding a post if you need a refresher).
2. In the right-hand settings sidebar, find the Featured image panel and click Set featured image.
3. Upload your optimized image, fill in the alt text (describe the image — it helps accessibility and SEO), and click Set featured image.
4. Click Update to save.

That’s it! Your post now has a professional featured image that shows up on your blog pages and in social shares. Make this a habit for every post — it’s one of the simplest upgrades to your site’s appearance.