How to Crop a Photo to a Fixed Ratio Online

To crop a photo to a fixed ratio, open Image crop, drop the photo, click the ratio you need (1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and so on), drag the box over the part you want to keep and click Crop. The file never leaves your browser. The rest of this page is the detail: the eight ratios, the exact pixel fields, rotate and flip, and the one thing people expect from a crop tool that this one does not do.

Step 1: drop the photo

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF and BMP are accepted, one file at a time, up to 100 MB. A phone photo that is stored sideways with an orientation tag is shown the right way up, so the box you draw matches what you see in your photo viewer. A very large photo (over 40 megapixels) is scaled down to 4096 pixels on its long edge before editing, and a short notice tells you so. If you need every pixel of a huge original, crop it in a desktop editor instead.

Step 2: pick the ratio

There are eight choices: Free, 1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16, 2:3 and 3:2. Free lets you drag any shape. Any other choice locks the box to that proportion, so dragging a corner makes it bigger or smaller without changing its shape, and dragging inside it moves it. Common matches: 1:1 for a profile picture, 16:9 for a video thumbnail or a wide header, 9:16 for a story, 3:2 or 2:3 for a standard print.

If you need an exact size rather than a shape, use the crop area fields under the image. They are in image pixels, not screen pixels, so typing a width of 1200 gives you a 1200 pixel wide crop whatever the zoom on screen.

Step 3: rotate or flip, if the photo is on its side

The toolbar has Rotate left, Rotate right, Flip horizontal, Flip vertical and Reset. Rotation is in 90 degree steps. Do it before you settle the box, because a 16:9 box that fits a landscape photo is the wrong choice once the same photo is turned upright. Reset puts the rotation, both flips and the crop box back where they started, without loading the file again.

Step 4: crop and download

Click Crop. A selection smaller than 8 pixels on a side is refused with a plain message, because that is almost always a slipped drag. The result keeps the source format by default and is saved as the original name with -cropped added. Under More options you can choose JPG, PNG or WebP instead. If the source may have transparency (a PNG, for example) and you choose JPG, which has no transparency, the clear areas are filled with white.

The box stays on the photo after a crop, so you can move it and crop again for a second framing of the same image. Because the crop is drawn onto a fresh canvas and saved again, camera metadata such as EXIF location does not carry over into the new file.

A worked example

You have a 3:2 landscape photo from a team event and need a square headshot. Drop the photo, click 1:1, drag the corner until the box is a little wider than the head and shoulders, drag the box so the face sits in the upper half with some space above the hair, then click Crop. If the team page asks for an exact 800 by 800 pixel image, type 800 in the width and height fields before you crop.

For which ratio suits which destination, see the aspect ratio guide; for why choosing the crop yourself beats a platform's auto-crop, see the profile picture guide. Then open Image crop with your own photo.