How to crop an image to an exact size
Your photo is fine, but the product is small in the middle with empty space around it, or the platform wants a square and your photo is wide. Cropping solves both: you keep the part that matters and remove the rest.
Cropping is not resizing
Resizing shrinks or enlarges the whole picture and keeps everything in it. Cropping takes part of the picture and removes what surrounds it, so the product looks bigger and clearer in the same space. You often need both: crop first to focus on the product, then shrink the result with the Image resizer.
The preset ratios
- Free: any area you like.
- 1:1: a square, which suits many product pages and posts.
- 4:5 and 3:4: portrait, taking more room on a phone screen.
- 16:9 and 9:16: wide or tall, for covers or stories.
- A ratio you type, if you need another shape.
These are common ratios, not the official specification of any platform, and platforms change their sizes. Check yours, then pick the ratio that fits.
A photo measuring 1600 × 1200 pixels with the 1:1 ratio.
The crop box starts as the largest centered square: X = 200, Y = 0, width and height 1200.
The downloaded file is exactly 1200 × 1200 pixels.
The same photo at 4:5: an area of 960 × 1200 starting at X = 320.
How to do it
- Open the Image cropper and choose a JPEG, PNG or WebP image.
- Pick the ratio, or leave it free.
- Drag the crop box and its handles with your finger or mouse, or type the position and size in pixels.
- Check the preview and the output size, choose the format, then download.
If you type a width of 600 with 1:1 selected, the height becomes 600 on its own and the file comes out at 600 × 600.
Details worth knowing
- The crop is taken from the original pixels; the preview on screen is only a scaled copy.
- Sizes are whole pixels, so a fixed ratio can be off by one pixel because of rounding.
- PNG keeps the crop with no loss at all. JPEG and WebP are saved at quality 92, a very slight loss.
- The tool does not rotate. If your photo is tilted, straighten it first with the Image rotator and flipper tool, then crop.
- It works on phones by dragging, and with the keyboard using the arrow keys for anyone not using a mouse.
Common questions
Does cropping lower the quality?
Nothing is lost when you save as PNG. Saving as JPEG or WebP loses very little, at quality 92.
Is location data removed from the photo?
Yes. EXIF data such as location and camera model is removed because the image is redrawn.
Is my photo uploaded?
No, cropping happens inside your browser on your device.