Image tool
Aspect Ratio
Turn a photo into a square, a portrait, or a widescreen banner, choosing whether to crop what does not fit or pad it out.
1. Choose an image
Handled entirely in this page. Nothing is uploaded.
Choose an image, or drop one here
You can also paste an image with Ctrl or Command and V
JPG, PNG, or WebP
Choose an image to begin. Nothing is uploaded.
2. Result
The converted image will appear here.
Cropping is not reversible here. When you choose to crop, the preview shows exactly what will be kept, centred. If the subject is near an edge, pad instead and place the background yourself, or crop in a photo editor first and convert afterwards.
Which ratio to choose
1:1 and 4:5
Squares and portraits for feeds. 4:5 uses more of a phone screen than a square and is rarely cropped.
16:9 and 9:16
Widescreen video and its vertical form. Use 9:16 for stories, reels, and shorts.
3:2, 4:3, 21:9
Camera and display shapes. 3:2 is what most photos start as, and 21:9 makes a very wide banner.
Crop and pad are different promises
Reshaping a picture to a new ratio has two honest answers, and which one you want depends on what the picture contains. This tool offers both as separate choices rather than picking for you, because they fail in opposite directions.
Padding adds bars, and keeps everything
Padding fits the whole picture inside the new shape and fills the remainder with a colour you choose. Nothing is lost, which makes it the safe choice for a screenshot or a document. It also means a 4:3 photograph padded to 16:9 arrives with visible bars, and most platforms will crop those bars off again before anyone sees it, at which point you have gained nothing.
Cropping removes the edges
Cropping fills the new shape and discards whatever falls outside it. That is what you want for a photograph with a single subject, and it is dangerous in a specific way: the crop is taken from the centre, so the edges of the picture are the first thing to go. A group photo cropped to 1:1 can lose the people at the sides. A portrait cropped to 16:9 loses the top of the head. Check the result before you use it.
DPI is not resolution
DPI is a number stored in the file that describes an intended print size. What the picture actually contains is pixels. For print at 300 DPI, a 3480 by 2400 pixel image gives you roughly A4, and nothing more. Changing the DPI number changes no pixels and changes no detail.
Resizing up adds nothing
Enlarging an image interpolates the pixels you already have. The file gets bigger and the extra size is smoothness, not detail. If a job needs more pixels, it needs a larger original.
One pass, in a sensible order
Reshape first, then size, then compress. Doing it the other way round means compressing detail you are about to crop away, and taking the quality hit twice.
Why aspect ratio matters more than pixel size
Most places that reject an image are objecting to its proportions, not its dimensions. A photo that is the wrong shape gets cropped automatically by the platform, usually by cutting the sides or the top, and that is what removes heads and subjects rather than anything you did.
Decide the ratio from the destination first. A square is for a profile image, a tall rectangle is for a story, a wide rectangle is for a banner or a video thumbnail. Setting the ratio before you compose the shot is far easier than fixing it afterwards, because there is no way to add back what was never in frame.
Cropping changes what the viewer sees, so check what you are losing. When the subject sits near an edge, shifting the crop rather than shrinking it usually preserves more of what matters.
When a print or an ID photo asks for exact physical dimensions, the pixel count has to follow from the required dpi rather than being chosen independently. An image at the right proportions but too few pixels will print soft regardless of how well it is framed.
Further reading: Read the full guide: Aspect Ratio
Common questions
Which ratios can I convert to?
Nine fixed ratios — 1:1 square, 4:5 and 3:4 portrait, 2:3 poster, 3:2 and 4:3 landscape, 16:9 widescreen, 9:16 vertical and 21:9 banner — plus a custom option for any width and height you enter yourself.
Does it crop or pad?
You choose, because they solve different problems. Cropping fills the frame exactly and cuts away whatever does not fit, taking from the edges and the middle. Padding keeps the entire image and adds bars to fill the frame, with a colour you pick — white for a document, black for a video still.
Does it ever make the image bigger than the original?
No. It never upscales in either direction. A 1200x800 photo asked for 1:1 becomes 800x800, not 1200x1200 with two hundred pixels of invented height. A 16:9 request still uses the full width, because the limit only binds when the requested ratio is squarer than the source.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The conversion is done by drawing to a canvas in this tab, so the file stays on your device.
Can I choose a transparent background when padding?
The padding colour is a plain colour rather than a transparent option. If you need transparency, export as PNG and design for the background you want, because padding with an opaque colour will fill the empty space rather than leave it clear.