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Fill and crop cut off the top of my product. How do I choose which part stays?

'Fill and crop' always keeps the centered area of the photo and does not let you move the crop, so anything near the top or sides is lost. The fix: crop the photo first in the cropper at the same ratio you want, placing the frame over the product yourself, then resize the result. The ratios match, so nothing more is cut.

Published · 3 min read

Why always the middle?

When the target ratio differs from your photo's, something has to go. The tool does not know where your product is in the picture, so it makes the most reasonable assumption: the middle. That suits most product photos, but it fails when the product sits high in the frame, like a tall bottle shot standing up, or off to one side.

Worked example

A 1080 × 1920 portrait photo that you want as a 1080 × 1080 square with 'Fill and crop'.

The tool keeps rows 420 to 1500 only, removing 420 px from the top and 420 px from the bottom.

If the bottle cap was in the top 400 px of the photo, it is gone entirely.

The tool does not hide this: a note says a centered area of given dimensions is used from the original and the rest is cropped away. Read it before downloading, and look at the preview.

The fix: a manual crop at the same ratio

  1. Open the Image cropper and choose the photo.
  2. Pick the ratio that matches your final size: 1:1 for a square, 4:5, or a custom ratio such as 1200:628.
  3. The frame starts in the middle, at Y = 420 in our example. Drag it up to Y = 0, or to wherever the whole product fits.
  4. Download the crop as PNG to avoid loss between the two steps.
  5. Open the Image resizer, choose the cropped file and type the final size. Since the ratios match, every fit mode gives the same result and nothing more is cut.

When you do not need the cropper

  • If the product is in the middle with enough space around it, the centered crop is fine.
  • If what matters is showing the whole product and you do not mind not filling the frame, choose 'Fit inside' instead, and nothing is lost.
  • If the two ratios are very close, the few pixels trimmed from the edges will not be noticed.

A small rounding difference

The cropper works in whole pixels, so the resulting ratio can be off by one pixel from the one you wanted. Do not worry: when your picture's ratio and the target's differ by less than a pixel, the resizer fills the frame completely, with no hairline band and no extra crop.

Common questions

Will the resizer get a way to choose the crop position?

We do not promise that. The current way is to crop first in the cropper, which gives you full control over the position.

Does cropping and then resizing lower the quality?

Cropping does not change pixels. If you save the crop as PNG, the only loss happens at the final save.