image tool
Image cropper
The picture is the control surface. Drag the box, pull a corner, lock it to a shape, and the pixel size follows you as you go. Nothing is applied until you press the one button at the bottom, so drag as often as you like.
Runs on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
Loading the tool…
How to use it
- 1
Drop the images
A box appears covering most of the frame. Several images at once is fine, and each keeps its own box.
- 2
Choose a shape
Free lets the box be anything. Any other tile locks that ratio while you drag, which is the part that is fiddly to do by eye.
- 3
Place the box
Drag the middle to move it and a corner to resize it. Arrow keys nudge by a pixel, shift and arrow by ten. The size shows on the box as you go.
- 4
Turn it if it needs it
Quarter turns, flips and a straightening slider all apply before the box, so what you framed is what gets cut.
- 5
Crop and download
Every image is cut from its own full resolution original and saved with the crop size in the file name.
The box is the control, not a form
A cropper that asks for four numbers is asking the wrong question, because cropping is a judgement about what is in the frame. So the picture fills the panel, the area outside the box is dimmed, thirds guides sit inside it, and the pixel size follows the drag. The numbers are still there in the advanced panel for the times you need them exactly, and they stay in step with whatever you drag.
Made for a thumb as well as a mouse
The most common complaint about crop tools on a phone is that the handles are impossible to grab. Here each handle is drawn small but has a 44 pixel touch area behind it, the size Apple and Google both use as the minimum. On a narrow screen the four edge handles step aside and you get the four corners, which is what fits without them overlapping. Dragging anywhere in the middle moves the whole box.
The shapes that keep coming up
Square for profile pictures and grid posts. Four to five is the tallest a feed will show without trimming it again. Nine to sixteen is a full phone screen, which is what stories and short video use. Sixteen to nine is slides, thumbnails and anything widescreen. Locking one of these is safer than eyeballing it, because a crop a few per cent off gets trimmed a second time on upload and your subject drifts out of the frame.
Crop first, resize second
Cropping decides what is in the picture. Resizing decides how many pixels describe it. Doing them in that order means the resize works on exactly the content you kept, and you avoid the common trap of shrinking first and then finding the crop you want no longer has the resolution for it. The pixel readout on the box tells you what you will be left with before you commit to anything.
Limits
- The crop is taken from the full resolution original, so it cannot add detail. A heavy crop leaves a small image.
- The preview is drawn at up to 1800 pixels for speed. The saved file is always cut from the full size picture.
- Animated GIFs are cropped to their first frame, because a canvas holds one frame at a time.
- A circular cut needs an alpha channel, so keep PNG or WebP. JPEG fills the corners with white instead.
- Twenty four images in one go, each with its own box.
What it does not do
- It does not find the subject for you. There is no face detection and no smart crop, only the box you place.
- It does not resize. Crop here for framing, then set exact pixels in the image resizer.
- It does not remember a crop between visits. Refreshing the page starts again.
Questions people ask
Is my image uploaded?
No. The file is decoded and drawn in your browser, and the page makes no network request after it has loaded. Nothing is stored on a server or in the page, so refreshing loses the image and you start again. That is deliberate: it means a screenshot with customer data in it never leaves the machine it is on.
Why is the download a PNG by default?
Because PNG is lossless, so cropping does not put a photograph through a second round of JPEG compression and stack fresh artefacts on old ones. The trade is size, since a photographic crop as PNG is often several times the original. Switch the format in the advanced options, or send the result through the image compressor afterwards.
Can I crop to an exact pixel size?
Type it into the width and height boxes in the advanced options and the box on the picture snaps to it, then drag the middle to choose which part of the frame it covers. If you want an exact output size regardless of what you cropped, crop for framing here and set the final pixels in the image resizer.
Does cropping lose quality?
Nothing is lost in the part you keep, because the crop is cut from the full resolution original at one to one, not from the preview on screen. What you lose is total pixels. Keep half the width and half the height and you are left with a quarter of the picture, which will look soft if you then display it large.
How do I make a round profile picture?
Lock the shape to 1:1, place the box, then tick the circle option in the advanced panel. The corners are cut away into transparency, so keep PNG or WebP as the format. JPEG has no alpha channel and will fill those corners with white instead, which is fine on a white page and obvious anywhere else.
Can I apply the same crop to a whole batch?
Place the box on one image and press Copy this shape to all. The box is copied as a proportion of the frame rather than as pixels, so a wide picture and a tall one both end up with the same relative crop. After that you can still step through them and adjust any one individually before saving.
What happens to a photo that was taken sideways?
Phone cameras often record the picture in one orientation and add a tag saying which way up it should be. The image is decoded with that tag honoured, so what you see is already the right way up, and the crop box works in that same upright frame. The quarter turn buttons are there for the times the tag was wrong.
Put this image on a flyer
Take what you made here into flyers.
Create a flyer with OneCraftRelated tools
- Image resizerResize a batch of images to an exact width, height or percentage. Fit, fill or stretch, with a stepped downscale that keeps detail. Nothing is uploaded.
- Image compressorCompress to WebP or JPEG and compare the result against the original under a divider you drag. Or ask for a size in KB. Nothing is uploaded.
- Flyer size resizerDrop a flyer and see it refitted onto all ten builder canvases at once, each drawn at its true shape, with the ones that will print soft flagged in words.
- Convert an imageSee your own picture measured in PNG, JPEG and WebP before you choose, then convert. Transparency is handled deliberately, and HEIC is explained.
- Aspect ratio calculatorType a size and see your shape drawn against any target: the bars if you fit it whole, the crop if you fill it. Presets for print, screen and social.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .