Crop images online, freeform or to a fixed ratio
The editor above opens in crop mode. Drag a selection across the picture, or choose a ratio and fine-tune the numbers, then apply. Everything happens on your device.
Cropping is not resizing
These two get muddled constantly, and they do opposite things to a picture.
Cropping changes what is in the frame. You keep a rectangle and throw the rest away. The pixels you keep are untouched — a crop never makes anything blurrier — but the image gets smaller in both dimensions and the composition changes.
Resizing keeps the whole frame and changes how many pixels describe it. Nothing leaves the picture; the detail simply gets coarser or, when enlarging, invented.
If a photo is the wrong shape, crop. If it is the right shape but too many pixels, resize. If the file is too heavy, compress. Most real tasks want two of the three, in that order.
The ratios, and where each one is used
| Ratio | Called | Where it turns up |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1 | Square | Profile pictures, Instagram posts, album art, app icons |
| 16:9 | Landscape | YouTube thumbnails, presentation slides, video stills, hero banners |
| 4:3 | Photo | Compact and phone camera default, older monitors, print at 6×4.5 |
| 2:3 | Portrait | 35 mm and most interchangeable-lens cameras, 6×4 inch prints |
| 9:16 | Story | Instagram and TikTok stories, Reels, phone wallpapers |
| Freeform | — | Anything with its own requirement, or no requirement at all |
Choosing a ratio locks the selection to that shape, so dragging can only change its size and position. That is usually what you want when the destination is fixed: a 16:9 thumbnail cropped by eye will be re-cropped by the platform, and rarely where you would have chosen.
Composing the crop
The selection box draws lines at the thirds — two vertical, two horizontal. The rule of thirds is the observation that subjects placed on those lines, or on the intersections where they meet, tend to sit more comfortably than subjects planted dead centre. A horizon along the lower third emphasises sky; along the upper third it emphasises foreground.
It is a convention rather than a law, and centring is exactly right for symmetry, portraits that stare down the lens, and anything where the subject is the whole point. The overlay is there to make the choice deliberate.
Two practical habits. Leave a little room in the direction a subject is facing or moving, so the frame does not feel cramped. And crop generously the first time if the image may be re-used somewhere with a different shape — you can always crop further, but the pixels you discard are gone once you download.
Crop first, then resize
The order matters. Cropping removes pixels from the picture entirely, so anything you do afterwards is working with less data and runs faster. Resizing first, then cropping, means you spent effort resampling pixels you were about to throw away — and if you resized down, the crop then comes from a smaller pool of detail.
In CropShrink, applying a crop rebases the image: the new bounds become the working image on both sides of the comparison divider, and the resize fields update to the cropped dimensions. The reset button restores the original if you change your mind.
Profile pictures and cover images
Most platforms crop a profile picture to a circle after you upload a square. The circle is inscribed in the square, so the corners are always discarded — keep faces well inside the middle, and do not put anything you need to be visible near an edge.
Cover and banner images are the opposite problem: they are wide, and they get cropped differently on phones than on desktop. Whatever the stated dimensions, keep the important content in the central band and treat the outer thirds as expendable. Once you have the shape, resize to the exact pixels the platform asks for.
More image tools
Every one of these is the same editor, opened for a different job — and all of them run on your device.
- Compress an imageShrink a photo for the web, an email or an upload form.
- Compress to 100 KBHit a hard upload limit without guessing at the quality slider.
- Resize an imageChange the pixel dimensions with Lanczos3, Catmull-Rom or Mitchell.
- PNG to WebPSame picture, same transparency, a fraction of the bytes.
- Remove EXIF dataStrip the GPS location, camera and serial number from a photo.
Or start from the full editor, which does all of it at once.