Have you tried setting this in image properties?

I said I did. "Align center."

OK, Just checking that you were aware of the image properties settings. You might have been trying with the settings offered for text alignment.

And much to my surprise, I find that if I select the image as if it were a text paragraph and apply the centering option for text, it centres.

Thanks, Zeno, I will try it and let you know the outcome, but I don't think it will work as my image is a "jpeg." Be back to you . . .

There is no way to copy an image (using Windows) as a text document. I have tried to place it in Word and Word Perfect; it looks fine in each application but when copying and pasting into the e-mail, it leaves out elements of the image. This is a flaw in Thunderbird, and moderators here should report it, as should anyone else who has tried to use the tab that says "Align text to image." What text? I want to insert an image.

I've just shown you it working.

Use return to start a new empty line. Insert the image. I use Insert|Image on the toolbar. I then hit return to start a new text paragraph and carry on typing. I can then go back to the image and select it. Because it is closed off by a paragraph marker, that is, a hard carriage return, when selected Thunderbird treats it as if it were a regular paragraph full of text, and so you can apply the text formatting options to it.

The alignment options found under image properties are rather lame tools for controlling how the nearby text relates to the picture, but support only left-aligned or right-aligned wrapping. Since there is no option for centering an image, they are not going to help you. I used those tools earlier in my test document to place copies of my image at the left and right hand margins, with the text flowing round them, but there wasn't room to include them in my screenshot, and since you didn't seem to be asking about text wrapping, I thought they were probably irrelevant.

Do you not have the HTML formatting toolbar visible? Along with font face selection, font colours, font styling (bold, italic, underlined) and font size, it also offers text alignment, which is what I found useful to control image placement.

Think of your image as a paragraph, then ask yourself if you want it left aligned, right aligned or centred. Then just user the tools for working with paragraphs.

Another possibility is to insert a 3-column table, leave it auto sizing, and place your image into its centre column.

The center column option compresses my image and was not useful, but thanks.

Putting in a line of text, highlighting the entire image and text, and centering it does work, however, since I don't need a line of text, it's a "fix" rather than a solution. I have to add text and then delete it. (There are text boxes in my image which explain everything; it's an invitation.) So, thank you very much. I just find it annoying when one has to create a workaround for something that should work! I don't know HTML coding and can't use that solution. If there is a tab that says "center" for an image, then it should do that.

I can't see what you find so hard.

Enter some text. Return. Return. Insert an image, on its own on the current empty line. Return. Return. Enter some more text. Return.

You now have, structurally, three content-holding paragraphs. Each can be selected and aligned. The second of these three paragraphs happens to contain just the image.

I think one important caveat is that you should resize the picture outside of Thunderbird, and insert the resized picture, rather than inserting a too-large picture and asking the email client to resize it in place. Thunderbird may do as you want, but the recipient's email client may not. Don't trust unknown software to make intelligent guesses on your behalf.

I hear your complaint about the image/text alignment setting, but as far as I can see it's about aligning text to the top, bottom or centre of the picture vertically.

I'd persevere with the table. I use one in my own signature, because I see that other methods fail when presented with a limited space, with unexpected and unwanted wrapping, notably on cramped displays.