Crop an image

Cropping is the one image edit that costs no quality at all. Resizing resamples — every output pixel is interpolated from several input ones, which is why an enlarged image looks soft. Cropping just discards the pixels outside the box and keeps the rest exactly as they were, so a crop of a sharp photo is still sharp. That is worth knowing because it means you should crop first and resize second, never the other way round: resizing to a target and then cropping throws away resolution you had.

The ratio presets exist because most places you post an image want a specific one, and a picture cropped to the wrong ratio gets cropped again by the platform — usually badly, and usually through someone’s face. 1:1 for most profile pictures, 16:9 for video thumbnails and slides, 9:16 for stories and short video, 4:3 for the classic camera frame.

One thing to think about before cropping a photo you did not take: the crop removes pixels, not metadata. Location, camera and timestamp live in the EXIF block and survive most edits. This tool draws to a canvas, which drops EXIF as a side effect — so the saved file has no location in it. That is a genuine privacy improvement and worth knowing about, but do not rely on any tool to strip metadata unless it says so.