Crop an image

Drag across the part you want to keep. Lock it to a square or another ratio if something is asking for one. The photo is cropped in this browser tab and is never uploaded.

How it works

Cropping is the oldest edit there is and still the one most often needed: the photo has the thing you want in it, and about a third of a room you would rather not send. Sometimes the reason is a shape, when a site wants a square and gives you no way to choose which square, and sometimes it is simply that the subject is off to one side.

The resizer on this site centre-crops, which is the only defensible default when the tool cannot know what the subject is. This is the answer for when the middle is the wrong part: you draw the region and it takes exactly that. A ratio can be locked so a square really is square, and switching ratio keeps what you already selected rather than throwing it away.

One detail decides whether the ratios are right or merely close. A selection here is stored as fractions of the image, so that a box drawn on a small preview lands correctly on a full-resolution original. But a fraction is not a shape: on a 2000 by 1000 photo, half the width and half the height is 1000 by 500 pixels, which is 2:1 rather than square. Every ratio is therefore worked out in pixels and converted back, which is the difference between a square crop and a nearly square one that a platform will reject.

Constraining a selection shrinks it rather than growing it, because growing would push the box off the edge of any region drawn near a border. The picture itself is untouched apart from the crop: pixels are copied, not resampled, so nothing softens, and the re-encode drops the metadata as a side effect, so the cropped copy no longer carries where the photo was taken.

How to use it

1 Choose an image, or paste one straight from your clipboard.
2 Pick a shape if something is asking for one, or leave it free.
3 Drag across the part you want to keep. The pixel size of the selection is shown as you go.
4 Press Crop and download the result.

Good to know

Ratios are worked out in pixels, so a square selection is genuinely square whatever shape the photo is.
Switching ratio re-fits what you already selected instead of clearing it.
The crop copies pixels rather than resampling them, so nothing gets softer than the original.
To change the pixel dimensions as well, crop here and then use the resizer.
Re-encoding drops the metadata, so the cropped copy carries no GPS location.

Browser support

Chrome 94 and later
Firefox 93 and later
Safari 16.4 and later
Edge 94 and later

These are the oldest versions with everything the tool uses. They are worked out from the tool itself, so they change when it does.

Version numbers checked on 2026-09-04.

A fraction is not a shape, and that is why your square crops are not square

Any crop tool that works on a preview has the same problem to solve. The image on screen is a few hundred pixels wide; the original might be four thousand. The selection has to be recorded in a way that survives that gap, and the obvious answer is to store it as a proportion of the image: this box starts 20 percent across and is 40 percent wide. Scale-independent, resolution-independent, and correct.

It is correct right up until a ratio is involved. Take a 2000 by 1000 photo and a selection half the width and half the height. In fractions that is a perfect 0.5 by 0.5, which looks square written down. In pixels it is 1000 by 500, which is 2:1. The fractions are equal and the shape is not, because the axes have different lengths underneath them. A tool that constrains ratios in fraction space produces crops that are square in the numbers and visibly wrong on the screen, and the error grows with how far from square the original was.

So the constraint has to be applied in pixels. Convert the fractional selection to pixels using the image dimensions, adjust the width or height there to hit the target ratio, convert back. The step is small and easy to skip, and skipping it is why so many crop tools produce a 1080 by 1074 square that an upload check rejects for not being square.

Then there is the question of which way to adjust. A selection that is too wide for the target ratio can be fixed by narrowing it or by making it taller, and the second is a trap: the user drew that box, and growing it means growing past whatever edge they drew near. Shrinking the over-long side always stays inside the image, always keeps the region the user was looking at, and never surprises them by expanding into content they deliberately excluded. Recentring on the original midpoint keeps the subject where they put it.

The last piece is what cropping does to quality, which is nothing. Unlike resizing, a crop copies pixels one for one; there is no resampling, no interpolation, no softening. The only loss is the re-encode, and that is a choice of format rather than a consequence of cropping. This is worth knowing because it makes the order of operations matter: crop first and resize second, and you resample once. Do it the other way and you resample the whole picture in order to throw most of it away.

Frequently asked questions

How do I crop a photo to a square?

Choose the photo, press Square, then drag across the part you want. The selection stays square as you drag, and the output is exactly square in pixels rather than approximately, which matters when a site checks.

Can I crop to 16:9 or another fixed ratio?

Yes. Square, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and a tall 9:16 are all offered, and Free lets you drag any shape at all. Switching between them re-fits what you have already selected rather than starting over.

Does cropping reduce the quality?

No. The pixels inside the selection are copied across unchanged, so nothing is resampled or softened. The file is re-encoded as a JPEG, which is a lossy format, but at a quality where the difference is not visible.

Can I crop and resize at the same time?

Not in one step, and deliberately: cropping chooses what to keep and resizing chooses how big the result is, and merging them into one control makes both harder to understand. Crop here, then use the resizer for exact dimensions.

Is my photo uploaded?

No. It is decoded, cropped and re-encoded inside this browser tab by your own device. You can watch your browser’s Network tab while you work: nothing carrying the photo goes out.

Why is my selection smaller than I dragged?

Because a ratio is locked. Constraining a selection always shrinks the longer side rather than growing the shorter one, since growing would push the box off the edge of the picture whenever you drew near a border.

Your files are processed on your device and are not uploaded. You can verify this in your browser’s developer tools under the Network tab.