Crop an image to Instagram post

Cropping is the one image operation a machine cannot do for you. Scaling and compressing have right answers; deciding what to cut out of a photograph does not, because it depends on what the photograph is of. This tool locks the frame to 1:1 and then gets out of the way — drag it over the part of the picture that matters, and the shape stays correct while you do.

The result is exactly 1080×1080 pixels — the size the platform publishes — so nothing further has to be adjusted after download.

Everything runs inside this page. The image is decoded, cropped and re-encoded by your own browser, and no copy of it is ever sent anywhere — which is the whole point when the picture is an identity document or a photograph of someone else's child.

What 1080 × 1080 px actually means

The shape is the part that has to be exact. Instagram post is a 1:1 frame, and anything delivered at a different ratio gets fixed by whoever receives it — a portal rejects it, or a platform crops it for you, badly, with no say in what goes. The pixel count matters less than people assume: 1080×1080 is what this preset produces because that is what the specification publishes, but a larger image of the same shape is usually accepted and simply downscaled.

Framing it well

Three things go wrong more than anything else. Cropping too tight, so the subject is jammed against the edge and the picture feels airless. Centring by reflex, when the natural place for a face is a little above the middle. And forgetting that the far edges of a frame get trimmed further by some viewers — profile pictures are usually displayed as circles, and banners are cut down hard on a phone.

The thirds grid drawn over the frame is there for the first two: put the subject on a line or an intersection rather than dead centre and most crops improve immediately.

Then what?

If the destination also caps the file size — most identity portals do, usually somewhere between 20 KB and 240 KB — crop here first, then take the result to thecompressor and give it the exact limit. If you need the same dimensions applied to a whole batch and automatic centre-cropping is good enough, theresizer will do all of them at once.