Free Image Cropper

Crop first, resize second

Cropping and resizing solve different problems and are best done in that order. Cropping decides what is in the picture; resizing decides how many pixels describe it. Crop away the dead space at the edges and you often find the image is already small enough, with the subject filling more of the frame than it did before.

Cropping costs nothing in quality. It removes whole pixels rather than degrading the ones that remain, so a cropped JPG is exactly as sharp as the original in the area you kept.

Aspect ratios that come up constantly

Crop for the frame it will sit in

The commonest complaint about a cropped image is that a platform cropped it again. That happens when the shape you exported does not match the shape the slot expects: a 16:9 photo dropped into a square feed post loses the left and right edges, and a tall portrait in a wide banner loses the top and bottom. Decide where the picture is going, crop to that ratio, and the platform has nothing left to trim.

Leave a little breathing room around the subject when the destination crops circles — profile pictures on most networks are masked into a circle, and a face cropped tight to a square loses its ears and chin.

Simple composition rules that hold up

• Put the subject slightly off centre rather than dead centre; the frame feels less static.
• Keep the horizon level and, in landscapes, out of the exact middle.
• Leave space in front of anything that is moving or facing a direction.
• Cut limbs at a point between joints, never exactly at a wrist, elbow or ankle.
• Check the edges last — a stray hand or sign at the border pulls the eye straight to it.

Printing a crop

A print shop works in inches and dots, not pixels. Crop to the print's shape first — a 3:2 photo does not fit an 8 × 10 inch frame without losing something — then check the remaining pixels against the size you want. Divide the pixel width by the printed width in inches; anything at or above 300 is comfortable, and down to about 150 is usually acceptable for a print you will not hold close.