Image Cropper

How to use Image Cropper

1. Choose your image.
2. Pick an aspect ratio and which part of the picture to keep (centre, top, bottom…), or choose Custom and type the left, top, width and height in pixels.
3. Check the resulting dimensions, then download.
4. Cropping is lossless in the sense that kept pixels are unchanged, but the file is re-encoded on save.
5. EXIF metadata, including GPS location, is removed by the re-encode.
6. The image is processed in your browser and never uploaded.

Cropping removes pixels; it does not resize them

Cropping keeps a rectangle of the original at its original resolution and discards the rest, so the result has fewer pixels but the same detail per pixel. Resizing changes the pixel count of the whole image. That distinction matters when you crop tightly and then display large: a 200×200 crop blown up to 800×800 is soft, because the detail was never captured. Crop first, then check the remaining dimensions are enough for where it will be shown.

The aspect ratios worth knowing

1:1 for profile pictures on nearly every platform. 16:9 for video thumbnails and slides. 4:5 for the tallest image Instagram will show in the feed without cropping it further. 1.91:1 for link preview cards, which is why Open Graph images are 1200×630. 3:2 for most camera output. Choosing the ratio before you crop saves the platform choosing it for you, usually by cutting off exactly the part you cared about.

Check what happens to the metadata

A photograph carries EXIF data: camera model, timestamp, settings, and often GPS coordinates. Re-encoding through a canvas discards it, which is a privacy improvement — a photo shared straight from a phone can tell a stranger where it was taken. It also discards the orientation flag, which is why an image that looked upright in a photo viewer can appear rotated after processing: the flag was doing the rotating, and browsers now handle it, but older files still surprise people.