Clip/Crop background-image with CSS

Question

I have this HTML:

<div id="graphic">lorem ipsum</div>

with this CSS:

#graphic { background-image: url(image.jpg); width: 200px; height: 100px;}

The background image I'm applying is 200x100 px, but I only want to display a cropped portion of the background image of 200x50 px.

background-clip does not appear to be the right CSS property for this. What can I use instead?

background-position should not be used, because I'm using the above CSS in a sprite context where the image part I want to show is smaller than the element on which the CSS is defined.

Answer 1

Another option is to use linear-gradient() to cover up the edges of your image. Note that this is a stupid solution, so I'm not going to put much effort into explaining it...

.flair {
  min-width: 50px; /* width larger than sprite */
  text-indent: 60px;
  height: 25px;
  display: inline-block;
  background:
    linear-gradient(#F00, #F00) 50px 0/999px 1px repeat-y,
    url('https://championmains.github.io/dynamicflairs/riven/spritesheet.png') #F00;
}

.flair-classic {
  background-position: 50px 0, 0 -25px;
}

.flair-r2 {
  background-position: 50px 0, -50px -175px;
}

.flair-smite {
  text-indent: 35px;
  background-position: 25px 0, -50px -25px;
}

<img src="https://championmains.github.io/dynamicflairs/riven/spritesheet.png" alt="spritesheet" /><br />
<br />
<span class="flair flair-classic">classic sprite</span><br /><br />
<span class="flair flair-r2">r2 sprite</span><br /><br />
<span class="flair flair-smite">smite sprite</span><br /><br />

I'm using this method on this page: https://championmains.github.io/dynamicflairs/riven/ and can't use ::before or ::after elements because I'm already using them for another hack.

Answer 2

may be you can write like this:

#graphic { 
 background-image: url(image.jpg); 
 background-position: 0 -50px; 
 width: 200px; 
 height: 100px;
}

Answer 3

You can put the graphic in a pseudo-element with its own dimensional context:

#graphic {
  position: relative;
  width: 200px;
  height: 100px;
}
#graphic::before {
  position: absolute;
  content: '';
  z-index: -1;
  width: 200px;
  height: 50px;
  background-image: url(image.jpg);
}

#graphic {
    width: 200px;
    height: 100px;
    position: relative;
}
#graphic::before {
    content: '';
    
    position: absolute;
    width: 200px;
    height: 50px;
    z-index: -1;
    
    background-image: url(http://placehold.it/500x500/); /* Image is 500px by 500px, but only 200px by 50px is showing. */
}

<div id="graphic">lorem ipsum</div>

Browser support is good, but if you need to support IE8, use a single colon :before. IE has no support for either syntax in versions prior to that.