Cropping and resizing are different operations
Cropping removes parts of a picture — the pixels outside the box are discarded and the composition changes. Resizing keeps the whole picture and changes how many pixels describe it.
That distinction decides which tool to use. If a photo is the wrong shape, crop it: squeezing a landscape photo into a square with the resizer and no ratio lock would distort every face in it. If the shape is right and only the dimensions or the file size are wrong, resize.
A common sequence is both: crop to the required ratio first, then resize the crop to the exact pixel dimensions the platform asks for.
Which ratio to use
The ratio presets exist because platforms expect specific shapes and crop anything else themselves — usually badly.
Common aspect ratios and where they are expected
| Ratio |
Shape |
Where it is used |
| 1:1 |
Square |
Profile pictures, avatars, Instagram grid posts |
| 4:3 |
Standard |
Older cameras, many presentation slides |
| 16:9 |
Widescreen |
YouTube thumbnails, video, modern slide decks |
| 3:2 |
Classic photo |
Most DSLR and mirrorless output, standard prints |
| 9:16 |
Tall portrait |
Instagram and Facebook stories, Reels, TikTok, Shorts |
| Free |
Anything |
Removing a distraction, or a bespoke layout slot |
Composing a crop
A few habits make cropped images look deliberate rather than salvaged.
- Give the subject room to look into. A face near the edge, looking off-frame, feels cramped; space in the direction of the gaze feels calm.
- Do not crop through joints. Cutting at a wrist, ankle or neck is jarring. Cut mid-limb instead.
- Keep the horizon level and off-centre. A horizon exactly halfway divides the picture into two competing halves.
- Crop tighter than feels comfortable for anything shown small — a thumbnail rewards a close crop.
- Leave margin for platform cropping. Several services crop again for different placements, so keep anything essential away from the very edge.
- Check the resulting pixel size. Cropping a small image tightly can leave you below the resolution the destination needs.
What cropping costs you
Cropping discards pixels permanently, so the result always has a lower resolution than the original. Crop a 12-megapixel photo down to a quarter of its area and you have a 3-megapixel image — fine on screen, potentially too small for print.
Always crop from the largest original you have rather than from an already-processed copy, and crop once. The output here is a JPEG, so each additional round trip through the tool re-compresses the image; transparency in a source PNG will also not survive, since JPEG has no alpha channel.