Crop—
Coverage—
Weight—
Short side—
Crop a photo by dragging the selection on the picture itself — move it, pull a corner, or draw a new box — with a locked aspect ratio and a rule-of-thirds grid to place the subject. The exact pixel coordinates are editable, travel in the share link, and the crop is exported live as you work.
Step by step
01Add the image
Drop the file in. It is decoded locally and drawn at full resolution — what you select is what gets exported, not a downscaled preview of it.
02Lock a ratio, or work free
Free lets the box go anywhere. 1:1, 4:5, 3:2, 16:9, and 9:16 hold their shape while you drag, which is what you want when the crop is destined for a known slot.
03Frame it with the guides on
The rule-of-thirds grid is there to place the subject, not to decorate the preview. Drag the corners to resize, drag inside the box to move the whole selection.
04Round the corners if you need them, then export
The radius clips the output itself rather than styling the preview — useful for avatars that will sit on an unknown background. PNG keeps the corners transparent; JPEG fills them.
Worked example
One 3000x2000 photograph, three destinations. The arithmetic below is what the ratio lock is doing while you drag.
Given
Largest selection each ratio allows, and what it costs
1:1 2000x2000 -> 1000px of width unused
4:5 1600x2000 -> 1400px of width unused
16:9 3000x1688 -> 312px of height unused
9:16 1125x2000 -> 1875px of width unusedA 3:2 photograph has room to become 16:9 and very little room to become 9:16 — which is why a vertical story crop of a horizontal photo so often clips a head. Decide the destination ratio before you frame the shot where you can; where you cannot, crop for the tightest ratio first and let the wider ones take more of the scene.
Before you crop
Cropping is the one edit that costs resolution
The output is exactly the pixels you selected: take a quarter of the frame and you have a quarter of the resolution. Check that what remains still meets the size the destination needs, because enlarging it afterwards will not bring the detail back.
The ratio lock is about the destination, not the picture
Avatars are square, stories are 9:16, most print is 3:2. Locking before you drag means the framing you settle on is the framing that ships, instead of being re-cropped by whatever system receives it.
Centre is a default, not a composition
Automatic crops elsewhere take the middle, which puts a subject standing off-centre against the edge of the frame. Doing it by hand exists precisely for the shots where the middle is wrong — and the thirds grid is there to show you where right is.
Rounded corners need an alpha channel
The radius clips the exported bitmap, so the corners are genuinely absent rather than covered. In PNG or WebP that reads as transparent on any background; in JPEG it becomes the background colour, which only works if you know what it will sit on.
Crop before you resize, not after
Resizing first spends resampling quality on pixels you are about to discard, and it makes the crop harder to place accurately. Select the frame at full resolution here, then take the result to the resizer for the exact box.
The original file is never touched
Decoding, selection, and export all happen on a canvas in your browser. The file on disk is unchanged, nothing is uploaded, and closing the tab leaves no copy anywhere.
The judgement call
The lock to reach for depends entirely on where the picture is going.
Profile picture or avatar
1:1
Every platform crops to a square or a circle inscribed in one. Choosing it yourself avoids their centre crop.
Instagram or Pinterest feed post
4:5
The tallest ratio the feed shows without cropping, so it occupies the most screen a viewer will give you.
Stories, Reels, TikTok
9:16
Full-screen vertical. Crop for it deliberately — an auto-crop from a landscape source will take the middle and lose the subject.
Video thumbnail or a slide
16:9
Matches the frame it will be placed in, so nothing is re-cropped downstream.
Printing at a standard size
3:2
The native ratio of most cameras and of 4x6 prints. Anything else means the lab crops for you.
Trimming a stray edge or a scan border
Free
There is no destination shape to honour — you are removing something, not composing for a slot.
Reference
FAQ
Type the numbers. The Selection section of the inspector holds X, Y, width, and height in the source image's pixels, measured from the top-left corner. Setting width and height there gives you an exact output size, and the values are clamped to the image so a crop can never run off the edge.
Choose the ratio in the Aspect ratio section before dragging. Every subsequent move and resize is snapped to that shape, and switching the ratio re-snaps the existing selection around its own centre rather than resetting it, so you keep your framing.
Yes. Lock the ratio to 1:1, then set the corner radius to 50% — a square crop with a 50% radius is a circle. Export as PNG or WebP so the area outside the circle stays transparent; JPEG has no alpha channel and would fill it with white.
No. The exported file contains exactly the pixels that were inside the selection, at their original resolution — nothing is resampled or re-scaled. What does fall is the total resolution: a crop covering a quarter of the frame has a quarter of the pixels, which is why the short-side figure in the footer is worth checking.
It divides the selection into nine equal parts. Placing a subject on one of the four intersections, rather than dead centre, is a long-standing composition convention that usually produces a more balanced picture. The grid is a guide only and never appears in the exported file.
No. The image is read by your browser, drawn to a canvas, and cropped locally. Nothing is transmitted or stored, and the share link carries only the crop rectangle and export settings — never the picture.
Cropping runs in your browser on a local canvas. The picture is never uploaded, and share links carry only the crop rectangle and export settings.
Keep going
Image resizer
Scale to exact dimensions, with centre-cropping handled for you.
Thumbnail generator
Fixed social sizes with backgrounds, padding, and rounded corners.
Image filters
Adjust brightness, contrast, and colour with a live before/after wipe.
Image compressor
Bring the cropped file under a size budget in kilobytes.