Crop an Image

Cropping is free, enlarging is not

Cropping discards pixels, which costs you nothing in quality — the pixels that remain are the original measured data. What it costs is resolution, and that only matters if the result ends up smaller than where it is going.

A 4000-pixel photo cropped to a quarter of its area is still 2000 pixels wide, which is more than enough for almost any screen use. Crop confidently; the mistake is enlarging afterwards to compensate, which invents detail that was never captured.

The ratios worth knowing

Most crops are made to fit a destination, and there are only a handful that matter:

• 1:1 square — profile pictures, and the universally safe social format.
• 4:5 vertical — the tallest ratio most feeds display uncropped, so it occupies the most screen space.
• 9:16 — stories, reels and TikTok, full phone screen.
• 16:9 — YouTube, link previews and most horizontal video.
• 3:2 and 4:3 — the native ratios of most cameras and phones, and the right choice for print.

Circles are a crop plus transparency

A circular crop is not really a crop — an image file is always rectangular. What it produces is a square image whose corners are transparent, which is why the export format matters.

Save a circular crop as PNG or WebP and the corners stay transparent over any background. Save it as JPG and the corners become solid white or black, giving you a circle in a box. This catches people out constantly with avatars.

Composition, briefly

Two habits improve most crops. Leave space in the direction a subject faces or moves, so the frame does not feel cramped against their gaze. And avoid cropping a person at a joint — the wrist, elbow, knee or ankle — because it reads as an amputation rather than a frame edge; crop mid-limb instead.

For anything going into a circular avatar slot, compose inside the inscribed circle. Everything in the corners of your square will be discarded by the platform.