What cropping is good for
Cropping is the oldest and most effective photo edit there is. Removing what does not belong in the frame changes how a picture reads more than any filter. Common reasons to crop:
- Fitting a platform's shape. Profile pictures are square, YouTube thumbnails and website banners are 16:9, Stories and Reels are 9:16. Uploading a photo in the wrong shape lets the platform crop it for you, usually cutting off a head or a product.
- Improving composition. Moving the subject off-centre, trimming empty sky or tightening the frame around a face.
- Removing distractions. A stranger at the edge of the frame, a cluttered desk, a watermark-free area of a screenshot.
- Sharing only part of a screenshot. Showing one error message or one row of a table without revealing the rest of the screen, including tabs, notifications or names.
How the cropper works
The frame stays in the middle of the work area and you move the picture underneath it. Drag to reposition, and zoom with the slider (up to 4x), the mouse wheel or a pinch gesture on a touch screen. The exact output size in pixels is shown next to the Crop button and updates as you move, so you know before saving whether the result is, say, 1080×1080 or only 640×640.
When you press Crop, the selected area is cut out of the full-resolution original, not from the preview on screen. The preview may be scaled down to fit your display, but the output uses every original pixel inside the frame. Nothing is resampled: zooming only changes how large an area you select, it never enlarges the pixels.
You can drop several images at once. They open one after another; crop each one, or press Skip to leave it out. Finished images collect in a list below, where you can download them one by one or all together as a ZIP.
Choosing the right aspect ratio
Ratios describe shape, not size: a 1:1 image can be 400×400 or 4000×4000. Pick the ratio for where the image is going, then check the pixel size shown next to the Crop button.
- Original keeps the photo's own proportions, useful when you only want to trim edges without changing the shape.
- 1:1 for profile pictures, avatars, marketplace product photos and square feed posts. Many platforms display avatars at 400×400 or more, so aim for at least that.
- 4:3 is the native shape of most phone cameras and compact cameras, and the classic presentation and tablet format.
- 4:5 for portrait Instagram feed posts; 1080×1350 takes up the most screen space in the feed.
- 3:2 is the shape of DSLR and mirrorless sensors and of standard 10×15 cm (4×6 inch) prints.
- 16:9 for YouTube thumbnails (1280×720 recommended), video covers, desktop wallpapers and wide website headers.
- 1.91:1 for link previews (Open Graph images, 1200×630) and landscape Instagram and Facebook posts (1080×566).
- 9:16 for Stories, Reels, Shorts and phone wallpapers; 1080×1920 is the usual target.
A practical rule: every time you crop, you throw away resolution. Cutting a 4000×3000 photo to a 9:16 vertical leaves at most 1688×3000, which is still plenty. Cutting a 1200×900 image to a tight 9:16 leaves only about 506×900, which may look soft when displayed full screen on a phone.
Quality, formats and metadata
The output keeps the format of the input. PNG is saved losslessly, so screenshots and graphics with text stay perfectly sharp, and transparency is kept. JPG and WebP are re-encoded at quality 92, a level at which differences from the original are not visible in normal viewing. The file name stays the same as the original.
Because the image is redrawn on a canvas, camera metadata such as the camera model, capture settings and GPS location is not carried over to the cropped file. That is useful if you are posting a photo taken at home and do not want its location attached.
Tips and limits
- If the horizon is tilted or the photo is sideways, fix it first with Rotate image, then crop; cropping cannot straighten a picture.
- If a platform needs an exact size such as 1200×630, crop to the matching ratio here, then set the exact dimensions with Resize image.
- Supported inputs are JPG, PNG and WebP up to 50 MB each. iPhone HEIC photos need converting to JPG first.
- All processing happens in your browser; images are never uploaded. Very large photos of 50 megapixels or more may take a moment to load and process on phones.