Image Cropper
Drag a selection or type exact pixel coordinates, lock it to a ratio if you need one, and export. The crop happens on your device and the original file is never touched.
Related tools
How to crop an image
- Drop your image in. It is decoded on your device — nothing is uploaded.
- Drag the selection. Grab inside it to move, grab a handle to resize.
- Lock a ratio if the result has to be a particular shape, or leave it free.
- Fine-tune with numbers. The X, Y, Width and Height fields are the same selection.
- Choose a format and export. Your original file is untouched.
Dragging or typing — both edit the same thing
Most croppers make you choose: an interactive box that is quick but imprecise, or number fields that are exact but tedious.
Here they are the same selection viewed two ways. Drag to get roughly where you want, then read the numbers and adjust one of them. Or type all four and never touch the preview. Whichever you change, the other updates.
This matters more often than it sounds. "Crop this to exactly 1200×630 for the social preview" is a numbers job. "Crop this so his head is not cut off" is a dragging job. Most real crops are a bit of both.
The selection can never leave the image, so a drag that overshoots stops at the edge rather than producing coordinates that make no sense. With a ratio locked, resizing from any handle keeps the shape — the tool adjusts the other dimension for you rather than letting the ratio drift.
Choosing an aspect ratio
A ratio is a shape, not a size. 16:9 describes 1920×1080 and 1280×720 equally.
1:1 — square. Profile pictures on nearly every platform, most product listings, album art. The safest choice when you do not know how something will be displayed, because a square crops predictably to almost anything else.
16:9 — widescreen. Video thumbnails, presentation slides, hero banners, most modern screens.
4:3 — traditional. The classic photo and monitor shape. Still what many print sizes and older displays expect.
3:2 — the camera shape. What most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras natively produce, and what a 6×4 print expects. Cropping a photo to 3:2 usually means barely cropping at all.
9:16 — vertical. Phone wallpapers, stories, vertical video. The same as 16:9 turned on its side.
If nothing downstream requires a particular shape, leave the ratio free. A composition that needs to be 5:4 to work should be 5:4.
Cropping is not resizing, and the difference matters
These get confused constantly, and confusing them is how people end up with a blurry image.
Cropping removes pixels. Select the middle of a 4000×3000 photo and take a 1000×750 region, and you have a 1000×750 image. Every pixel in it is one of the originals, unchanged. Nothing was stretched or invented.
Resizing rescales pixels. Take that same 4000×3000 photo and resize it to 1000×750 and you still have the whole scene, but every pixel is now an average of several originals.
Two consequences follow.
Cropping cannot make an image sharper by zooming in. Cropping to a small region and then displaying it large is enlarging a small image, and there is no detail there to recover. The number to watch is the selection size shown under the preview: if it says 400×300 and you intend to display it at 1200px wide, the result will be soft no matter what you do.
Crop first, resize second. If you need a 1200×630 social image from a large photo, crop to 1200:630 proportions first, then resize down. Doing it the other way throws away detail you were about to keep.
For the resize step, use the image resizer — it is a separate tool because it is a separate operation.
Getting the composition right
The grid inside the selection marks the rule of thirds: put the subject along one of the lines, or on a point where two cross, rather than dead centre. Faces work well on the upper third; horizons sit better on the upper or lower line than through the middle.
It is a guideline, not a rule — symmetry and centred subjects can be very strong. But for a quick crop where you are not sure, thirds is a reliable default.
Two other things worth checking before you export:
Leave room in the direction of movement or gaze. A person looking to the right of frame wants space on the right. Crop tight against the direction they are facing and the image feels cramped.
Do not crop through a joint. Cutting a portrait at the wrist, ankle, knee or elbow looks like an accident. Crop mid-limb instead — mid-forearm, mid-thigh — and it reads as deliberate.
Choosing an export format
PNG is lossless, keeps transparency, and is the right choice for logos, screenshots, diagrams and anything with sharp edges or flat colour. Photos come out considerably larger than JPEG.
JPEG is lossy and much smaller for photographs. It has no transparency: transparent areas are filled with white on export. Every save re-compresses, so avoid repeated round trips.
WebP is usually 25–35% smaller than JPEG at comparable quality, supports transparency, and is supported by every current browser. It is the best default for the web, with JPEG as the fallback when something downstream will not accept it.
Limits and requirements
Whole pixels only. The selection snaps to integers on export, because a fractional pixel is not a thing an image file can contain.
Rectangular crops. Circles and rounded corners need transparency masking, which is a different operation.
No detail is invented. Cropping only ever removes.
Memory scales with pixels, not file size. A decoded image is about four bytes per pixel, so a 50-megapixel photo occupies roughly 200 MB while it is open.
Browser support. Any modern browser on desktop or mobile. The selection works with touch as well as a mouse.
Privacy: how this tool handles your image
Your image is decoded, cropped and re-encoded entirely inside your browser. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is logged, nothing is stored, and closing the tab discards it.
The reasoning is specific to what cropping is for. A large share of crops exist to remove something: a face at the edge of a photo, a document on the desk in the background, a street sign that gives away where you live, an ex-partner, a bystander who did not consent to be in the shot.
A server-side cropper receives the uncropped original. Everything you were trying to remove arrives on someone else's machine first, in full, and is then removed from the copy you get back. The thing you were protecting has already left.
Doing the work locally makes that structurally impossible rather than a matter of policy. You can confirm it: open your browser's developer tools, watch the Network tab while you crop, and see that nothing carries your image. Or disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded — the tool carries on working, because it never needed a connection.
Frequently asked questions
Does cropping reduce the quality of my image?
Cropping itself does not — it discards pixels outside the selection and keeps the rest exactly as they were. What can cost quality is the re-encode afterwards. Saving as PNG or WebP lossless keeps every remaining pixel identical. Saving as JPEG re-compresses, and because JPEG is lossy, a photo that was already a JPEG loses a little more each time it is saved. If the source was a JPEG and you plan several edits, work in PNG and export to JPEG once at the end.
What aspect ratio should I use?
It depends on where the image is going. 1:1 for profile pictures and most product listings. 16:9 for video thumbnails, presentation slides and hero banners. 4:3 for a traditional photo shape and many print sizes. 3:2 is what most cameras natively shoot and what 6×4 prints expect. 9:16 for phone wallpapers and vertical video. If nothing downstream demands a ratio, leave it free and crop to what looks right.
How do I crop to exact pixel dimensions?
Type them. The X, Y, Width and Height fields underneath the preview are the same selection you drag, so you can drag roughly into place and then type exact numbers — or type all four and never drag at all. X and Y are the top-left corner measured from the top-left of the image, which is the convention every image editor uses.
Why is my crop soft or pixelated?
Almost always because the source is smaller than you think. Cropping takes a region out of the original and does not invent detail — take a 200×200 area out of a 400×400 image and you have a 200×200 image, which will look soft if you then display it at 800px wide. Check the pixel dimensions shown above the preview. If the crop you need is smaller than the size you intend to display, the source is too small for the job.
Can I crop a transparent PNG and keep the transparency?
Yes, as long as you save as PNG or WebP. Both carry an alpha channel and transparency survives the crop untouched. Saving as JPEG does not — JPEG has no alpha channel at all, so transparent areas have to become something. This tool fills them with white rather than the black you get from a naive conversion, but the transparency itself is gone once you export as JPEG.
What do the grid lines in the selection mean?
They mark the rule of thirds — a composition guideline that suggests placing the subject on one of the lines, or on one of the four points where they intersect, rather than dead centre. It is a starting point rather than a law, and plenty of strong images ignore it entirely, but for a quick crop it usually helps. The lines are a guide only and never appear in the exported image.
Is there a file size limit?
No fixed limit, because there is no server to impose one. The constraint is your device's memory: the image is decoded into a bitmap, which takes roughly four bytes per pixel regardless of how well the file itself compresses. A 50-megapixel photo is about 200 MB once decoded, which a desktop handles comfortably and an older phone may not. Ordinary photos are nowhere near this.
Is my image uploaded anywhere?
No. It is decoded, cropped and re-encoded entirely inside your browser. Nothing is transmitted, logged or stored, and closing the tab discards everything. This matters for photographs specifically, because cropping is so often about removing something — a face, a document in the background, a location, a bystander. Uploading the uncropped original to a stranger's server to remove it is the wrong shape of operation.