Orpheus

Crop an Image to a Square

For a profile picture that is not squashed.

Every tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.

A square crop takes the largest square from the centre of the image and scales it to the size you want. The proportions are preserved, so nothing is stretched — the edges are trimmed instead.

How to use Square Image Cropper

  1. Add your photos. Drag them in or click to browse. A batch works in one run.
  2. Pick an output size. 400 pixels suits most profile pictures; 1000 for LinkedIn.
  3. Download. Metadata is stripped by default, which matters for phone photos.

About cropping an image to a square

Cropping to a square sounds trivial and has one decision in it that determines whether the result is usable: what to do when the source is not square, which it almost never is. There are two ways to fit a rectangle into a square box. One is to scale both axes independently until the box is filled, which distorts everything — faces become wide or narrow in a way that reads as wrong before anyone can say why. The other is to take the largest square that fits inside the source and scale that, trimming the excess. The second is always correct for photographs, and it is what happens here. The trim is taken equally from both sides, keeping the centre, which is the right default because photographic subjects are usually near the middle. Where they are not — someone standing at the edge of a group shot — the sensible order is to crop roughly by hand first and square the result. Metadata deserves attention on this particular operation more than most. A profile picture is among the most widely distributed images anyone publishes, and a photo straight from a phone typically carries GPS coordinates accurate to a few metres, a timestamp, and the device model. Re-encoding through a canvas discards all of it as a side effect, which is why stripping is both the default and effectively free. Finally, resolution: most platforms downscale whatever they receive, so supplying a larger square than needed costs nothing and protects against a future redesign that displays it bigger.

Frequently asked questions

Which part of the image is kept?
The largest possible square taken from the centre. On a landscape photo that trims equally from left and right; on a portrait it trims from top and bottom. If your subject is off-centre, crop it roughly in a photo app first and then square it here.
Will it stretch my photo?
No. The crop is square before any scaling happens, so the proportions never change. Squashing is what you get from forcing a rectangle into a square box, and it is exactly what this avoids.
What size should a profile picture be?
Four hundred pixels covers most platforms comfortably, and eight hundred or a thousand is worth using where the image may be shown large or on a high-density screen. Most services downscale whatever you upload, so larger is safer than smaller.
Why strip the metadata?
Because a photo taken on a phone usually carries GPS coordinates, the exact time, and the device model — and a profile picture is one of the most widely visible images a person publishes. Stripping is the default here for that reason.
What if my image is smaller than the output size?
It is enlarged to fill the square, which will look soft. There is no way around that — the detail is not in the file. Start from the largest version you have rather than one already resized for something else.

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