Pick the most interesting region of an image when generating sub-sizes, so thumbnails always centre on the subject instead of the corner.
How it works
Smart cropping replaces the default WordPress image-resize behaviour for sub-sizes that have a hard-coded aspect ratio. Instead of cropping from the geometric centre, ClassifAI asks Azure AI Vision to identify the visual region of interest in the original image and crops around that point — so a tall portrait keeps the face, a landscape with one subject keeps the subject, and a product shot keeps the product. The feature integrates at the WordPress image-editor level, so it works for every existing intermediate size your theme registers (thumbnail, medium, large, custom) without code changes.
Configuration
- Which registered sub-sizes are routed through smart cropping (each call is a paid Azure request, so most sites only enable it for sub-sizes shipped to readers).
- Allowed roles and an allowed-users list for granular access control.
Providers
This is the only ClassifAI feature with a single supported provider:
- Microsoft Azure AI Vision — the only vision API in the supported set that exposes a smart-crop endpoint returning coordinates rather than a generated image.
Use cases
- News and editorial sites where every article uses a featured image cropped to multiple aspect ratios.
- E-commerce catalogues where the centre crop frequently misses the product.
- Photo galleries with mixed orientations where default cropping clips heads or important details.