Image Cropper
Set an area by numbers, or pick a standard ratio.
Cropping is the strongest edit there is
More than any filter or adjustment, what you leave out determines whether a photograph works. Cutting away the empty foreground, the distracting edge of a building, or the stranger walking through the corner usually improves an image more than anything else you can do to it.
The ratio presets
- 1:1 — square. Profile pictures and many social feeds.
- 4:3 — the traditional camera and screen shape.
- 3:2 — 35 mm film, and most interchangeable-lens cameras. Prints at 6×4 inches with nothing cut off.
- 16:9 — widescreen video and modern displays.
- 9:16 — vertical video and phone-first formats.
Each preset takes the largest area of that shape that fits and centres it. Adjust the numbers afterwards to move it where you want.
Cropping costs pixels
A crop keeps only the part you selected, so the result is smaller in both dimensions. Cropping to a quarter of the frame leaves a quarter of the width. If that is going to be printed or displayed large, check the resulting dimensions before committing — an aggressive crop of an already-small image runs out of detail quickly.
Composition worth trying
- Cut the empty space, which is usually the top of a landscape shot or the ground in front of a subject.
- Keep the horizon level and off-centre. A centred horizon splits the picture into two competing halves.
- Leave room in the direction someone is looking rather than behind them.
- Do not crop through joints — wrists, ankles, knees. It reads as an amputation rather than a frame.
Common uses
- Profile pictures, which are almost always square.
- Removing something from the edge of a frame.
- Fitting a fixed shape for a banner or a card.
- Straightening up a screenshot.
Questions people ask
Does cropping reduce quality?
It reduces size rather than quality. The pixels you keep are unchanged, but there are fewer of them.
What aspect ratio should a profile picture be?
Square, 1:1. Most platforms display it as a circle cut from that square, so keep the subject centred.
What is 3:2 for?
35 mm film and most system cameras. It prints at 6×4 inches with nothing cut off.
Can I crop to an exact pixel size?
Yes, type the numbers directly. The ratio buttons are a starting point rather than a constraint.
Your image is not uploaded
This is the part worth being precise about, because almost every other site offering these tools works differently.
When you choose a file here, your browser reads it from your disk into memory and draws it onto a canvas. The work happens on your own machine. No copy is transmitted, because this site is a set of static files with no server behind it capable of receiving one.
The practical consequences: it works with no internet connection once the page has loaded, there is no file size limit beyond your own memory, there is no queue, nothing is retained on anyone's disk afterwards, and your photographs are not passing through a third party's infrastructure.
You do not have to take that on trust. The about page lists every network request this site makes, read live from your own browser.