Crop Image
Trim and crop images to any size. Select a region and download the result instantly.
Select an image
or drag and drop it here
JPG, PNG, WEBP, GIF. Up to 50 MB.
You can also paste an image directly with Ctrl+V / Cmd+V
JPG, PNG, WEBP, GIF
All formats
Aspect presets
1:1, 4:3, 16:9, 3:2
No sign-up
Free forever
Files never stored
100% private
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Crop image
Crop images online, free
Remove the parts of a photo you do not need and keep the part you do. Upload a JPG, PNG, WEBP or GIF up to 50 MB, drag to select the area, pick a ratio preset or crop freeform, and download. No design software, no account, and nothing kept afterwards.
It is for anyone who needs to reframe a picture quickly — for a post, a page, a document, or just to cut out something distracting. Below: what cropping actually does to your pixels, which ratio suits which job, and the mistakes that are easy to make and annoying to undo.
The basics
What is image cropping?
Cropping removes the outer parts of an image and keeps a selected rectangle. The framing changes and the dimensions shrink to match what you kept — but the pixels inside the selection are not touched. Nothing is blurred, stretched or recalculated. It is a smaller selection of the original, not a new version of it.
A landscape photo with the subject off to one side and a lot of empty space around them can be cropped down to just the subject. The composition tightens, the distraction goes, and the pixels that remain are exactly the ones the camera captured.
Cropping is not resizing. Resizing scales the whole image and keeps all of it. Cropping keeps part of it at its original scale. The two are compared properly further down.
Why crop
What cropping is good for
Three jobs, really: improve the composition, meet a required shape, or remove something that should not be in the frame.
Remove distractions
Cut out a cluttered background, a stray object, or the half-person standing at the edge of the frame.
Improve composition
Tighten the frame around your subject. Most photographs get stronger when there is less of everything else in them.
Social media
Match what a platform expects — square for a profile, vertical for a Story, wide for a cover — instead of letting it crop for you.
Profile photos
Crop to a square centred on a face, so the circle most platforms render does not cut off a chin or an ear.
E-commerce
Standardise product shots to one shape and one framing, so a catalogue grid lines up instead of looking assembled.
Documents and scans
Trim a scanned page, ID photo or diagram down to just the content, without the desk it was photographed on.
Printing
Crop to a standard print proportion — 3:2 is close to a 4×6 print — before you send it off, rather than letting the lab decide.
Presentations
Crop a screenshot to just the part that matters, so it sits cleanly in a slide without dead space around it.
How to use it
Three steps
- 1
Add your image
Drag and drop, paste with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac), or browse. JPG, PNG, WEBP and GIF, up to 50 MB.
- 2
Drag the crop area
Pull the rectangle over what you want to keep. Pick a ratio preset to constrain it, or leave it on Free and shape it however you like.
- 3
Download
The crop is applied and the file comes back in the same format you uploaded — no conversion, no extra step.
The editor takes one image at a time — every crop is a judgement about that particular picture, so there is nothing sensible to batch. If you need to process a set, resizing and compressing both handle up to 30 files at once.
Aspect ratios
Which ratio to use
An aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between width and height. Picking a preset locks the crop rectangle to that shape while you drag it, so you cannot drift off-proportion by accident.
Free
No fixed proportion — drag the rectangle to any shape. The right choice when you are cropping for composition rather than to meet a requirement, and the only one that suits a panorama.
1:1
A square. Profile pictures on essentially every platform, and square feed posts. If you are cropping a face, this is usually the preset you want.
4:3
A gently wide rectangle, historically the standard for cameras and monitors. Still common for general photography and presentation slides.
16:9
Widescreen. Website banners, YouTube thumbnails, video stills and anything that has to sit across the top of a page.
3:2
The classic 35mm photography proportion, close to a printed 4×6. The natural starting point for anything headed to print.
In practice: a landscape photo destined for an Instagram profile picture gets the 1:1 preset, dragged so the face sits in the square. Then resize that square to the exact pixels the platform asks for.
Formats
Supported formats, and what happens to each
Cropping never converts your file. Whatever you upload is what you get back, with transparency and animation intact.
JPG (JPEG)
The standard for photographs. The pixels inside your selection are carried over as they were; only the JPG encoding step touches them again.
- Use it for
- Photographs and anything without transparency.
- Watch out
- No transparency — a transparent source area becomes solid in a JPG.
PNG
Lossless, with transparency preserved through the crop. Verified: a transparent PNG cropped here still reports an alpha channel on the way out.
- Use it for
- Logos, screenshots, graphics, anything needing a transparent background.
- Watch out
- Larger files than JPG for photographic content.
WEBP
Handles photographs and graphics efficiently and keeps transparency. Cropped and returned as WEBP, so the file you get back is the file you brought.
- Use it for
- Web images where size and quality both matter.
- Watch out
- Slightly thinner support in older desktop software than JPG or PNG.
GIF
Animation survives the crop. Every frame gets the same window and the frame delays are carried over, so a cropped animation plays exactly as it did — just smaller.
- Use it for
- Short looping animations and low-colour graphics.
- Watch out
- A 256-colour palette makes it a poor container for photographic detail.
Quality
Does cropping reduce quality?
No — and this is the part people most often get wrong. Cropping keeps a subset of the original pixels. It does not scale, blur or recalculate them. If a cropped image looks worse, something other than the crop did it.
It was the compression
Cropping and compressing are separate steps. If the result is saved as a JPG at a low quality setting, that encoding is what softened it — not the crop.
It was the enlargement
Crop a small area out of a photo, then scale that crop up, and the scaling has to estimate pixels that were never captured. That is where the blur comes from.
The file will normally be smaller after cropping, for the plain reason that there are fewer pixels left to store.
Practical version: crop from the highest-resolution copy you have, and try not to enlarge the crop much afterwards.
Crop vs resize
Which one do you actually need?
| Crop | Resize | |
|---|---|---|
| Content | Part of the image is removed | All of it is kept, just scaled |
| Composition | Changes — the framing is different | Unchanged — same picture, different scale |
| Pixel dimensions | Change | Change |
| The pixels you keep | Untouched by the crop itself | Recalculated by the scaling |
| Best for | Removing distractions, changing shape, focusing on a subject | Hitting a target size without losing any content |
| Example | A wide photo cut down to a square avatar | 4000×3000 shrunk to 1200×900 for the web |
Need a particular shape and can afford to lose the edges? Crop. Need the whole picture at a different size? Resize. Very often it is both — crop to the shape first, then resize that result to the exact dimensions required.
Platform sizes
Common social media dimensions
Crop to the right shape here, then resize to the exact pixels. These reflect commonly published guidelines and do change — check the platform for anything business-critical.
| Platform | Profile | Post / feed | Story | Cover / banner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 320×320 | 1080×1080 | 1080×1920 | — | |
| 170×170 | 1200×630 | 1080×1920 | 820×312 | |
| 400×400 | 1200×627 | — | 1584×396 | |
| 165×165 | 1000×1500 | 1080×1920 | — | |
| YouTube | 800×800 | 1280×720 | — | 2560×1440 |
| TikTok | 200×200 | 1080×1920 | 1080×1920 | — |
| X (Twitter) | 400×400 | 1200×675 | — | 1500×500 |
As a shortcut: 1:1 covers nearly every profile picture, and 16:9 covers most banners, covers and thumbnails.
Troubleshooting
Common cropping mistakes
Cropping too tightly
No breathing room makes an image feel cramped, and leaves nothing to give when a platform applies its own crop on top of yours.
The wrong aspect ratio
Cropping square for somewhere that wants widescreen means the platform crops it again — badly, and without asking. Decide the ratio before you start dragging.
Cutting off the subject
Faces near the edge of a selection are the usual casualty. Check the whole subject is inside the rectangle before you download.
Cropping a tiny area from a small image
There is only so much pixel data to go round. A small crop of an already-small photo leaves you with very little, and enlarging it afterwards is what makes it look blurry.
Forgetting the original
The removed parts are gone from the cropped file. Keep the uncropped original and you can always crop it a different way later.
Cropping when you meant to resize
If you need the whole picture at a smaller size, cropping is the wrong tool — it will throw away the edges to get there.
Resize insteadBest practice
Getting cropping right
- Start from the highest-resolution version of the photo you have.
- Decide the target ratio before you start dragging, so you are not adjusting the same selection twice.
- Leave a small margin around your subject rather than cropping edge to edge.
- For profile pictures, sit the face slightly above the vertical middle — many platforms round the image into a circle.
- Use 1:1 for anything going into a square profile or feed post, and 16:9 for banners, covers and thumbnails.
- For documents and scans, crop just outside the content rather than tight against it, so nothing clips.
- Undecided between two ratios? Crop freeform for composition first, then see which preset it landed closest to.
- With transparent PNGs, look carefully at the selection — transparent regions are easy to misjudge against a light background.
- Crop consistently across a product catalogue so the thumbnails line up.
- Keep the original. Cropping is not reversible from the cropped file.
Why this one
What you get
Drag to select
Pull the crop rectangle directly on the image and see exactly what you are keeping before you commit to it.
Five ratio options
1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and 3:2 lock the selection to shape; Free lets you drag anything, including panorama proportions.
Format and animation kept
JPG, PNG, WEBP and GIF all come back in the format you uploaded — transparency preserved, GIF animation intact.
Files are never stored
The image is cropped in memory and returned in the same request. Nothing is written to disk or saved to a database.
Works on any device
Any modern browser on iPhone, Android, Windows or Mac. You can paste a screenshot straight in with Ctrl+V.
Free, no sign-up
No account, no email, no watermark and no daily limit.
Privacy & security
What happens to your file
Your image is uploaded over an encrypted HTTPS connection, cropped in memory, and handed straight back in the same request. It is never written to disk, never saved to a database and never queued for later. Once the response is sent, nothing about it remains.
No account is required, so a crop is not attached to an identity either — which matters when the thing you are trimming is an ID photo, a scanned document or unpublished work.
Encrypted in transit
HTTPS end to end
Nothing retained
Discarded after the response
Never written to disk
Held in memory only
Full detail is in the privacy policy.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How do I crop an image online?
Upload your image, drag the crop rectangle over the part you want to keep — or pick an aspect ratio preset first — and download the result. Nothing to install.
Does cropping reduce image quality?
No. Cropping only removes the pixels outside your selection; the ones inside are kept as they were. Quality loss comes from a different step — heavy re-compression, or enlarging a small crop afterwards.
Will cropping change my file format?
No. A JPG comes back a JPG, a PNG a PNG, a WEBP a WEBP and a GIF a GIF. Changing format is a separate job for the converter.
Can I crop a PNG with transparency?
Yes, and the transparency survives. Transparent areas inside your selection stay transparent in the result.
Can I crop a GIF without losing the animation?
Yes. The same window is applied to every frame and the frame timing is carried over, so a cropped animation plays exactly as it did before — at the new size.
Can I crop a WEBP image?
Yes, including WEBP with transparency. It is cropped and returned as WEBP.
What aspect ratios can I choose?
1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and 3:2 as presets, plus Free, which lets you drag any shape you like with no constraint.
What is aspect ratio?
The proportional relationship between width and height — 1:1 is a square, 16:9 is widescreen. Picking a preset locks the crop rectangle to that shape while you drag it.
How do I crop a profile picture?
Use the 1:1 preset and centre the face in the square, sitting it a little above the middle. Most platforms render profile pictures as a circle, which trims the corners.
Can I crop an image for Instagram?
Yes — 1:1 for a square post or profile picture, or crop to a tall shape for Stories and Reels. The sizes are in the table above.
Can I crop an image for YouTube?
Yes. 16:9 matches a YouTube thumbnail, and it is the right starting shape for a channel banner too.
Can I crop an image for printing?
Yes. The 3:2 preset is close to standard photo print proportions like 4×6 inches, which makes it a practical starting point.
Can I crop without losing resolution?
The pixels you keep are not touched, so nothing is degraded. The cropped image has fewer total pixels than the original simply because it covers a smaller area.
Why does my crop look blurry?
Almost always because the source was low-resolution to begin with, or because a small crop was enlarged afterwards. The cropping step itself does not soften anything.
Can I crop a panorama or an unusually wide photo?
Yes. Use the Free ratio — it has no constraint, which is exactly what an unusual shape needs.
Can I crop more than one image at a time?
No. The crop editor works on one image at a time, because every crop is a decision about that particular picture. For batch work, the resizer and compressor both take up to 30 files.
Can I undo a crop after downloading?
Not from the cropped file — those pixels are no longer in it. Keep your original if there is any chance you will want to crop it differently.
What is the maximum file size?
Up to 50 MB per image.
Can I paste an image instead of uploading a file?
Yes. Copy an image or take a screenshot, then press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac) anywhere on the page.
What's the difference between cropping and resizing?
Cropping removes part of the image to change its framing. Resizing scales the whole image to a new size and keeps all of it. They are often used together — crop to shape, then resize to the exact pixels a platform wants.
Can I crop on iPhone or Android?
Yes. It runs in any modern mobile browser, and you can pick images straight from your camera roll or gallery.
Do I need to sign up?
No. No account, no email, no watermark.
Are my images stored after cropping?
No. The image is decoded, cropped in memory and returned in the same request. Nothing is written to disk or saved to a database.
Does it work offline?
No. The crop is applied on the server, so an internet connection is needed.
Something not covered? There are more answers on the FAQ page, or you can contact support.
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