What the Image Cropper does
The Image Cropper trims a photo or screenshot down to a rectangle you draw on it. Drop the image, click and drag to mark the area you want to keep, click Crop, download the result. That's the whole loop.
It runs entirely in your browser. The image file is loaded into a regular HTML img tag, the crop region gets drawn to an HTML canvas, and the canvas exports the cropped pixels via the native canvas.toBlob API. Nothing uploads. Nothing leaves the tab. If you open your browser's DevTools and watch the Network panel while cropping, you'll see zero outbound requests for the image data.
That matters because the alternative — iLoveIMG, Convertio, CloudConvert — all push your image to a remote server, crop it there, and send the result back. Fine for a vacation photo. Less fine for a screenshot of an internal dashboard, a contract page, a medical scan, or a child's face. The Microapp Image Cropper removes that question entirely. The image is on your machine. It stays on your machine.
How to use the Image Cropper
Five steps. No account, no email, no 5MB free-tier cap.
- Drop or pick your image. PNG, JPG, or WebP. Up to 50 MB. 4K and 8K photos work — they render scaled-down in the preview, but the crop applies to the full-resolution source.
- Pick an aspect ratio if you want one. The dropdown has six choices: Free (any rectangle), 1:1 (square), 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, and 9:16. Free is the default.
- Click and drag on the image to draw your crop area. The corners get visible handles. Everything outside the selection dims so you see exactly what you'll keep. Drag the handles to resize, drag the middle of the box to reposition.
- Click Crop image. The output preserves the source format: PNG stays PNG with transparency intact, JPG stays JPG, WebP stays WebP.
- Download. The filename bakes in the new dimensions — vacation.jpg becomes vacation-cropped-1200x800.jpg, so you can tell at a glance which version is which.
The whole thing takes about twelve seconds for a single image, including drag time.
Aspect ratios and what they're for
The six presets cover roughly 90% of real-world cropping. Pick the one that matches where the image is going, not the one that matches your taste — different platforms enforce different aspect ratios, and an image that's been pre-cropped to the platform's ratio displays cleanly without further auto-cropping by the platform's own code.
| Ratio | Best for | Typical pixel dimensions |
|---|---|---|
| Free | When you don't care about ratio — banners, custom UI elements, irregular reference crops | Whatever you drag |
| 1:1 | Profile pictures and avatars (LinkedIn, GitHub, Discord, Slack), Instagram feed posts, square thumbnails | 400×400, 800×800, 1080×1080 |
| 4:3 | Print photo paper (4×6 inch prints are actually 3:2, but 4:3 is the older standard), classic camera output, presentation slides on older projectors | 1600×1200, 2048×1536 |
| 3:2 | Standard DSLR sensor output, 4×6 print paper, most photo prints sold at drugstores | 1800×1200, 3000×2000 |
| 16:9 | YouTube thumbnails (1280×720 is the recommended source), modern presentation slides, video posters, desktop wallpaper | 1280×720, 1920×1080, 3840×2160 |
| 9:16 | TikTok videos, Instagram Stories and Reels, Snapchat, vertical mobile wallpaper, YouTube Shorts | 1080×1920, 720×1280 |
Free mode is the right pick when you're cropping for your own use — extracting a single chart from a screenshot, isolating a face for a memory, trimming dead space from the edges of a scan. Locked mode is the right pick when you know the destination — anything published to a platform that auto-crops will benefit from being pre-cropped to that platform's ratio.
The platform-fit rule: if a platform displays your image inside a specific frame, that platform is going to crop it whether you like it or not. Pre-cropping with the matching aspect ratio means you pick which parts survive. Skip the crop and the platform picks for you — usually by chopping the top and bottom off a tall photo or the sides off a wide one.
A worked example: turning a phone photo into a YouTube thumbnail
Say you have a 4032×3024 photo from your iPhone (standard 4:3 ratio) and you want a 1280×720 YouTube thumbnail (16:9). The phone photo is tall relative to YouTube's frame, so something has to come off the top or bottom.
Open the Image Cropper, drop the photo, switch the aspect ratio to 16:9. Draw a rectangle that frames the subject — say, the face — centered horizontally and positioned so the top of the rectangle sits just above the subject's eyebrows. The locked ratio means the height auto-adjusts as you drag the width; you don't have to do the math.
Crop. The resulting JPG measures roughly 3024×1701 pixels (the full original width, with the height calculated as 3024 × 9 ÷ 16 = 1701). That's well above YouTube's 1280×720 minimum — YouTube will downscale it on upload. The file is around 800 KB, down from the source's 3.2 MB, because we're keeping less pixel area.
If you want the exact 1280×720, run the cropped output through the Image Resizer next. The Cropper handles the framing decision; the Resizer handles the scaling decision. Two tools, one decision per tool — the way it should be.
Output format and what gets preserved
The Image Cropper preserves the source format. PNG in, PNG out. JPG in, JPG out. WebP in, WebP out. We chose this default because format changes during cropping are usually a mistake — you almost never want to crop a PNG screenshot and silently get a JPG back with transparent areas painted white.
If you want to crop and convert formats, run the image through the Cropper first, then through the Image Format Converter. Same architecture: two tools, one decision per tool. Cleaner mental model than the all-in-one combos at iLoveIMG and Convertio, where the format-conversion happens implicitly and you have to dig through settings to find it.
EXIF metadata mostly does not survive. Canvas re-encoding strips camera model, GPS coordinates, exposure data, and most of the other embedded tags. For users sharing cropped photos online, this is usually a feature — it means you don't accidentally leak the GPS coordinates of your house when you post a photo of your dog. For archival cropping where the EXIF matters, use a tool that crops without re-encoding (ExifTool can do this from the command line; most browser-based croppers cannot).
How this compares to the alternatives
The crop-an-image-online category is crowded. Most options work; they just work differently. The honest comparison:
| Tool | Where the crop runs | Watermark / cap | Aspect ratios |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microapp Image Cropper | Your browser | None | 6 presets + Free |
| iLoveIMG | Their server (upload required) | None on crop, but file-count limits on the free tier | Free-form only |
| Convertio | Their server (upload required) | Free tier caps at 100MB and 10 conversions/day | Limited presets |
| CloudConvert | Their server (upload required) | Free tier caps at 25 conversions/day | Limited presets |
| TinyPNG | Their server | None on crop, but TinyPNG is mostly a compressor — crop is secondary | None — crop is an afterthought |
| ezgif (image-crop) | Their server (upload required) | Ads on every page | Free-form only |
The "where the crop runs" column is the one to read carefully. Server-side cropping means your image gets uploaded to someone else's machine, processed, and sent back. The result is identical to a browser-side crop in 99% of cases. The privacy properties are not identical at all.
Free is a fact, not a slogan. The Image Cropper costs nothing because there's no server to pay for — everything happens on the visitor's hardware. iLoveIMG and Convertio and CloudConvert charge for server time because they spend server time. Microapp doesn't, so it doesn't charge.
Related Microapp tools
The Image Cropper handles framing. For the other common image operations:
- Image Resizer — change pixel dimensions without re-framing. Useful after cropping to hit an exact target size (1280×720 for YouTube, 1080×1080 for Instagram).
- Image Compressor — reduce file size without changing dimensions. Useful when you need to email or upload a photo and the file is too big.
- Image Format Converter — change PNG to JPG, JPG to WebP, WebP to PNG, any direction. Useful when the destination requires a specific format.
- Aspect Ratio Calculator — work out target pixel dimensions for a given ratio. Useful before cropping if you want to land on a specific final size.
Frequently asked questions
How does aspect-ratio lock actually work?
Pick a ratio from the dropdown (1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 9:16, or Free). When locked, dragging changes the width and the height auto-snaps to match. Free mode lets you draw any rectangle. The math runs as you drag — you don't see it, but the height field is being continuously recalculated from your width and the chosen ratio. Switch back to Free at any time if a locked ratio is fighting your composition.
Is the image really not uploaded?
Correct. The image is loaded into the browser's img tag; the crop region gets drawn to a canvas; the canvas exports the cropped pixels. Every step runs in your browser's memory. Zero outbound requests during the crop. The easiest way to verify is to open DevTools, switch to the Network tab, drop your image into the tool, run the crop, and confirm nothing new shows up in the request list.
What's the maximum image size I can crop?
50 MB per image. The cropped output is typically much smaller, because you're keeping a subset of the original pixels. 4K and 8K photos work fine — they render scaled-down in the preview area for sanity, but the actual crop applies at full resolution. If you have a single image over 50 MB, the bottleneck is browser memory, not our tool. Most browsers struggle with anything past 100 MB regardless of which cropping tool you use.
Why does my crop look slightly different from what I drew?
If aspect-ratio lock is on, the rectangle you drew gets adjusted to match the chosen ratio — the height auto-corrects from your width. So if you drag a square but the ratio is set to 16:9, the final crop will be wider than tall by the time you release the mouse. For pixel-perfect arbitrary crops, switch to Free mode in the aspect-ratio dropdown.
Can I crop a circle or other non-rectangular shape?
Not in v1 — only rectangular crops. For circular avatars, set the ratio to 1:1, crop to a square, then either apply a CSS border-radius:50% on display or run the result through a separate "make circular" tool. We may add masked crops if there's enough demand; for now, the rectangle covers most use cases.
Can I crop multiple images at once with the same coordinates?
Not in v1 — each image gets its own crop area. Batch cropping where the same rectangle applies to many images is on the roadmap. The use case (cropping a folder of product photos to the same frame) is real; the UI for previewing the crop against each individual image is non-trivial, so it's queued behind a few other things. For now, run each image through individually.
Does it preserve EXIF metadata?
Mostly no. Canvas re-encoding strips camera model, GPS coordinates, exposure data, and most other embedded tags. For users sharing cropped photos online, this is usually a feature — GPS strip-out by default is the privacy-safe behavior. For archival cropping where EXIF matters (forensic work, photo-organization apps that key off camera model), use a tool that crops without re-encoding. ExifTool is the standard one.
What aspect ratio should I use for [some specific platform]?
Instagram feed posts: 1:1. Instagram Stories and Reels: 9:16. TikTok: 9:16. YouTube thumbnails: 16:9. YouTube Shorts: 9:16. LinkedIn profile picture: 1:1. LinkedIn banner: 4:1 (use Free and aim for that). Twitter/X profile picture: 1:1. Twitter/X header: 3:1 (use Free). Facebook cover: 16:9-ish (use Free or 16:9). Discord avatar: 1:1. When in doubt, square — 1:1 is the safest fallback because almost every platform's avatar slot is square.