How to Crop an Image: Exact Sizes, Ratios and Circle Crops

To crop an image, open ToolMany's Crop Image tool, choose or paste your picture, pick a ratio such as 1:1 or 16:9, drag the box over the part you want to keep and press Crop and download. For a round profile picture, switch on Round crop and save as PNG.

Cropping sounds simple, but most problems people hit come from mixing it up with resizing, or from choosing the wrong ratio for the place the picture is going. This guide sorts both out.

Cropping vs resizing

These two words get used interchangeably, but they do different things:

• Cropping removes the outer parts of a picture. The pixels you keep are untouched, so detail stays the same and the shape can change.
• Resizing scales the whole picture up or down. Nothing is removed, but every pixel is recalculated, and forcing a new shape stretches or squashes the content.

When a site says "upload a square photo", crop to 1:1. When it says "maximum 1080 pixels wide", resize. Many jobs need both, in that order: crop to the right shape, then use the Image Resizer to reach the exact pixel size.

Step by step

1. Open Crop Image. Choose a file, drop it on the box, or press Ctrl+V to paste a screenshot.
2. Pick a ratio. Free lets you draw any shape; the presets keep the box locked to that shape while you resize it.
3. Drag inside the box to move it, and drag the round handles on the corners and edges to resize it. The grid helps you line things up using the rule of thirds.
4. For exact results, type X, Y, width and height in pixels. The box follows.
5. If the photo is sideways or mirrored, use the rotate and flip buttons first.
6. Choose PNG, JPG or WebP. For JPG and WebP, a quality slider appears.
7. Press Crop and download. The file name includes the final size, for example holiday_cropped_1080x1350.jpg.

Which ratio to use

A ratio describes shape, not size. A 1:1 crop can be 400×400 or 4000×4000 pixels; the shape is what platforms check first, and they usually scale the picture down themselves.

Making a round profile picture

Most platforms display avatars as circles but expect you to upload a square. If you want the circle baked into the file, for an email signature, a slide or a website, use Round crop:

1. Pick the 1:1 ratio so the circle is a true circle, not an oval.
2. Place the box so the face sits slightly above the centre, with some space above the head.
3. Turn on Round crop and save as PNG. The corners outside the circle are transparent, so the picture sits cleanly on any background colour.

JPG cannot store transparency, so a round crop chosen as JPG is saved as PNG automatically.

Cropping screenshots

Screenshots often include a taskbar, browser tabs, notifications or a second window with private information. Cropping them out before you share is quicker than editing and safer than hoping nobody looks closely.

Paste the screenshot straight into the tool with Ctrl+V, crop to the part that matters, and save as PNG, which keeps text sharp. If the picture must be small, convert it afterwards or run it through the Image Compressor.

Quality and file size

Cropping itself never lowers quality. What can lower quality is saving:

• PNG is lossless. Best for screenshots, logos and anything with text. Files can be large for photos.
• JPG is the most widely accepted format for photos. Quality 85 to 92 is visually close to the original at a much smaller size.
• WebP gives smaller files than JPG at similar quality and is accepted by most modern websites, though not by every upload form.

Removing a large part of the picture also makes the file smaller, simply because fewer pixels are left. If an upload form still says the file is too big, keep the crop and lower the JPG quality a little, or compress the result separately, rather than cropping away parts of the picture you actually need.

Official photos

Passport and visa photos have strict rules for head size and position, not just the ratio. For those, use the Passport Photo Maker, which sizes the photo to the country's requirement and lays out a print sheet.