How to cover a div with an img tag (like background-image does)?

Question

As discussed here I am trying to get an image to be covered within a div. With just these simple lines I was able to achieve this via background-image:

div{
    width: 172px;
    height: 172px;
    border-style: solid;
    background-image: url('../images/img1.jpg');
    background-size: cover;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center;
}

In result the image was centered within the div and was resized so it would fit the width or the height of the div (depending if the image was wide or not). Now I would like to achieve the same result with the image tag within the div.

<div>
  <img src="images/img1.jpg"/>
</div>

Is there any way to get through this with plain CSS?

Answer 1

Use object-fit:cover to not lose ratio.

div {
  border: black solid;
  width: 400px;
  height: 400px;
}

img {
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  object-fit: cover
}

<div>
  <img src="//loremflickr.com/100/100" />
</div>

NOTE: this is not supported in IE

---

It doesn't work in IE (by the way, it is an outdated browser, so please educate your clients to use at least the upgraded browser EDGE), but there are a few object-fit polyfills out there that will make object-fit work.

Here are a few examples:

• object-fit-images
• constancecchen /object-fit-pollyfill
• Polyfill for CSS object-fit property

Or if you think its an overkill using a polyfill just for that property, here is simple snippet that will make this work in IE.

You can use a simple JS snippet to detect if the object-fit is supported and then replace the img for a svg

//for browsers which doesn't support object-fit (you can use babel to transpile to ES5)

if ('objectFit' in document.documentElement.style === false) {
    document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
        document.querySelectorAll('img[data-object-fit]').forEach(image => {
            (image.runtimeStyle || image.style).background = `url("${image.src}") no-repeat 50%/${image.currentStyle ? image.currentStyle['object-fit'] : image.getAttribute('data-object-fit')}`
            image.src = `data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' width='${image.width}' height='${image.height}'%3E%3C/svg%3E`
        })
    })
}

img {
  display: inline-flex;
  width: 175px;
  height: 175px;
  margin-right: 10px;
  border: 1px solid red
}

/*for browsers which support object fit */

[data-object-fit='cover'] {
  object-fit: cover
}

[data-object-fit='contain'] {
  object-fit: contain
}

<img data-object-fit='cover' src='//picsum.photos/1200/600' />
<img data-object-fit='contain' src='//picsum.photos/1200/600' />
<img src='//picsum.photos/1200/600' />

Answer 2

If you want to recreate the background-size: cover; look without using a CSS background image, you can use the following to achieve the desired result. Keep in mind, however, that there will always need to be a container holding the image.

div {
    position: relative;
    overflow: hidden;
}
img {
    position: absolute;
    top: 50%;
    left: 50%;
    transform: translate(-50%,-50%);
    min-width: 100%;
    min-height: 100%;
    height: auto;
    width: auto;
}

Depending on your additional CSS, you might want to use max-width and max-height.

Answer 3

Try this:

div {
    position:relative;
}
img {
    max-height: 100%;
    max-width: 100%;
    margin: auto;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    right: 0;
}

This assumes you have given a size to the div.