✂️ Image Cropper
Crop to the exact dimensions every platform expects — no upload, no watermark
Crop Your Image
Social Media Image Sizes (2026)
| Placement | Exact Pixels | Aspect | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube thumbnail | 1280×720 | 16:9 | Min 640px wide; JPG/PNG/GIF/WebP; 2MB max |
| YouTube channel banner | 2560×1440 | 16:9 | Safe area for all devices: 1546×423 centered |
| Instagram feed (square) | 1080×1080 | 1:1 | Feed displays between 1.91:1 and 4:5 |
| Instagram feed (portrait) | 1080×1350 | 4:5 | Tallest the feed shows; best for reach |
| Story / Reel | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Keep text out of top 250px and bottom 310px (UI) |
| Facebook cover | 820×312 | 2.63:1 | Desktop display size; mobile crops sides to ~640×360 |
| LinkedIn personal banner | 1584×396 | 4:1 | Very wide — put content center-left |
| LinkedIn / X profile photo | 400×400 | 1:1 | Displayed circular; keep margins |
| X (Twitter) header | 1500×500 | 3:1 | Safe area ~1260×420 centered |
| Pinterest pin | 1000×1500 | 2:3 | Standard pin ratio |
| Open Graph (og:image) | 1200×630 | 1.91:1 | Link previews on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack |
Dimensions per each platform's own help pages, checked August 2026. Platforms tweak display crops more often than they change upload specs, so the pixel counts above are the stable part.
How Cropping and Resizing Work Together
This tool does two jobs in one export. First it crops: you choose a region of the source image, and every pixel inside it is kept exactly as-is — cropping is pure geometry, no quality loss. Then it resizes the crop to your target dimensions on a high-quality canvas, and re-encodes once into JPG, PNG, or WebP.
A worked example: camera photo to Instagram square
Take a 4000×3000 photo (a standard 12MP 4:3 frame). The largest square inside it is 3000×3000 — cropping to 1:1 throws away the left/right 1000 pixels total. Scaling that 3000×3000 crop down to 1080×1080 keeps 1080 ÷ 3000 = 36% of the linear resolution, which is 12.96% of the pixels — and since Instagram displays the image at 1080 wide anyway, the downscale costs nothing visible.
A LinkedIn banner from the same photo: the 4:1 ratio means a 3000-pixel-wide crop is only 3000 ÷ 4 = 750 pixels tall. Scaled to the 1584×396 target, that's 27.9% of the crop's pixels. Rule of thumb: the wider the ratio, the more vertical context you lose, so choose photos with a strong horizontal band before committing them to banners.
What about print?
DPI doesn't exist for screens, but when a crop is headed to paper the pixel count sets the print size. At 300 DPI (photo-print standard), a 1280×720 YouTube thumbnail prints 4.27 × 2.4 inches; a 1080×1080 Instagram square prints 3.6 inches square; an X header at 1500 pixels wide prints 5 inches. Need bigger paper? Start from a larger source image, because upscaling cannot add detail that was cropped away.
Open-source note
The crop engine is Cropper.js v1.6.2 by Chen Fengyuan (MIT), vendored unmodified at /vendor/cropper.min.js with its license. No server is involved at any step.
Frequently Asked Questions
What size is a YouTube thumbnail?
1280 by 720 pixels (16:9), at least 640 pixels wide, saved as JPG, PNG, GIF, or WebP under 2MB per YouTube's upload rules. Upload anything wider or taller and YouTube letterboxes or squashes it, which is why cropping to the exact frame first matters.
Why does Instagram crop my photos?
Instagram displays feed photos at aspect ratios between 1.91:1 (landscape) and 4:5 (portrait), so anything outside that band gets cropped to fit. Crop to 1080×1080 (square) or 1080×1350 (4:5 portrait) before uploading and you decide what gets cut off, not the algorithm.
Does cropping an image reduce its quality?
Cropping itself is lossless geometry — you keep 100% of the original pixels in the region you select. Quality only changes at the export step: PNG and WebP-lossless keep every pixel, while JPG re-encodes once (invisible at quality 0.9). Downscaling to a smaller output, like 4000px to 1080px, actually increases sharpness per pixel.
What's the difference between cropping and resizing?
Cropping cuts pixels away — a 4000×3000 photo cropped to a square is 3000×3000 pixels of the same scene. Resizing stretches or squeezes the whole image to new dimensions, changing every pixel. This tool does both in one step: crop to the aspect ratio, then resize the crop to the exact output size.
Is 72 DPI or 300 DPI important for web images?
No. Screens display pixels, not inches, so DPI metadata is ignored by browsers and social platforms. DPI only matters when a file goes to a printer: 1280 pixels at 300 DPI prints 4.27 inches wide; the same file at 72 DPI prints 17.8 inches. The pixel count is the only real quantity.