How to Crop a Photo

Often, we don't have enough time to plan the composition of a photograph while shooting (especially when we're in a hurry). It’s only later you realize some of the pics leave a lot to be desired: perhaps the main element is too small and distant, or there’s too much background full of unnecessary details. Cropping out the excess background is the easiest way to improve the composition and make your photos look their best.

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You don’t need to study comprehensive picture editing software if you just need to crop a photo. The best way is to try a simple yet powerful tool like Movavi Photo Editor. You can use this handy app as a photo cropper for a variety of purposes: cut out certain picture elements, zoom in on the main focus of the image, make passport-size photos, and more.

Crop an Image Using Preview. If you merely need a quick fix for cropping a photo, there has to be a quicker way, right? You can use Prevew to crop photo. While Preview is not much of a photo editing tool, it’s quite handy for quickly cropping an image. The Preview app of OS X includes a myriad of image editing functions, markup tools, and conversion functions that are largely overlooked and underused, so if you’re just learning to use the Preview app for simple photo modifications and editing, crop is a great place to start.

Just download the appropriate version of the program – for Windows or Mac – and read the following step-by-step guide to learn how to crop photos.

Install Movavi Photo Editor

After downloading the installation file from our website, double-click on it to start the installation process. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Click the Browse for Images button to open the file you’re going to work with. Alternatively, you can simply drag-and-drop it into the working area.

Once the image has been added, click the Crop button at the top of the program interface. The dotted line frame shows the area of the picture that will be cropped. To change the size of the frame, just drag the appropriate edges of the frame. Move the frame over the picture until you’re happy with the proposed final image.

Snipping tool on a mac. You can easily annotate, highlight, or obfuscate, the screenshots you take with Greenshot using the application itself and export them in various ways. Greenshot is completely free, open source, and it runs on both macOS and Windows. LightShot is a Mac Snipping Tool alternative and arguably the fastest way how to take a customizable.

You can also choose one of the preset proportions for the crop frame: Square (1:1), iPhone (3:2), DVD (4:3), Widescreen (16:9), and more.

If every pixel counts, you can specify the crop frame size manually – just enter the desired number of pixels into the Width and Height fields. To maintain the selected proportions, click Lock aspect ratio.

When you’ve marked the required frame area, click Apply to see how the cropped image will look. To start over, just click the Undo button. And remember that you can always undo the changes by clicking the Revert Changes button.

To save the finished picture, click the Save button in the lower right corner and specify the destination folder, filename, and format. You can save your picture in JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, or any other popular image format.

Movavi Photo Editor

The easiest way to turn any snapshot into an eye candy

Add effects and filters
Change image backgrounds and remove objects

Movavi Video Editor

A comprehensive, streamlined video editing program that has everything you need to create amazing home movies with custom soundtracks, special effects, cool titles, and transitions.

Movavi Screen Recorder

An easy way to record from your screen in HD. Make video footage of any application, record online streaming video, webinars, even Skype calls, and save clips in all popular formats.

Cropping photos – cutting them down to a size you prefer – can easily be done in as little as a few seconds with a basic photo editing tool. Whether you need to cut out unnecessary visual aspects or change the shape or aspect ratio of the photo, cropping is the way to go for quick results.

Below, you'll learn how to crop photos on a PC or Mac using your computer's respective built-in photo editing program. You'll also learn how to crop photos on a mobile device using a free photo editing app.

It's easy, fast and actually pretty fun once you get the hang of it.

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Crop a Photo As a Rectangle on Your PC

If you're a PC user running on Microsoft Windows, you can use a built-in program called Microsoft Paint to do your cropping. You can find Paint under All Programs by accessing the Start menu.

To open your photo in Paint, click File > Open and select a file from your computer. Now you can start cropping.

Click the crop selection button in the top menu, identified by the rectangular crop icon that has a Select label at the bottom. Once clicked, it should turn a light blue color.

Now when you move your cursor over your photo, you can click, hold and drag out the rectangular crop outline over your photo. When you let go of your mouse, the crop outline will still be there and you'll be able to click on any corners or mid-points (marked by the white dots) to reposition it.

If you want to start over, simply click anywhere on the photo and the crop outline will disappear. When you're happy with your crop outline, click the Crop button in the top menu to finish the cropping.

You can also adjust image sizes while in Microsoft Office.

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Crop a Photo As a Free Form Selection on Your PC

As an alternative to rectangular cropping, Paint also has an option for free-form crop selections. So if you wanted to crop out the entire background of the photo in the example above, you could slowly trace around the hand and flower using the free-form crop selection to do it.

To use the free-form crop selection, click on the arrow beneath the Select label on the crop button in the top menu. From the drop-down menu, click Free-form selection.

Click anywhere on the photo where you want to start your free-form selection and hold it as you trace around the area you want to keep. Once you've made it back to your starting point (or simply let go), the crop outline will appear.

Click on the crop button Free signature tool for mac. to complete your free-form crop selection and the area of the photo outside the crop outline will disappear.

If you'd rather crop around the area of the photo that you want to get rid of, which can be much easier to do in some instances, you can select Invert selection from the dropdown menu when you click Free-form selection and draw your crop outline.

To get rid of the white space around the cropped area of the photo, click Transparent selection from the dropdown menu when you click Free-form selection and draw your crop outline.

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Crop a Photo As a Rectangle on Your Mac

Program like paint tool sai for mac. If you're a Mac user, you'll have a program called Photos installed on your machine that allows you to do your cropping. To access it, click the Applications icon in the bottom menu, scroll down and click Photos.

Click File > Import to choose a photo from another folder to Photos if you need to or simply double click on an existing one in Photos to open it.

Click the briefcase icon at the top of the photo viewer to display the menu of editing options. Make sure the crop icon located at the far left of the editing options is set to square/rectangle. (If it isn't, click on the arrow to the right of the crop icon to select Rectangular Selection from the dropdown menu.)

Click and hold your anywhere on the photo. Drag it to see the cropping outline expand.

You can do this in one

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