Cropping reduces the size of a picture (picture: A file (such as a metafile) that you can ungroup and manipulate as two or more objects or a file that stays as a single object (such as bitmaps).) by removing vertical or horizontal edges. Cropping is often used to hide or trim a part of a picture, either for emphasis or to remove unwanted portions.
You can always restore a resized or a cropped picture to its original appearance. You can also outcrop a picture, which adds a margin (margin: The blank space outside the printing area on a page.).
You can crop (crop: To trim vertical or horizontal edges of an object. Pictures are often cropped to focus attention on a particular area.) any picture, except an animated GIF (animated GIF: A file that contains a series of Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images that are displayed in rapid sequence by some Web browsers to produce an animated effect.) picture, by using the Crop feature. To crop an animated GIF, trim the picture in an animated-GIF editing program, and then insert the picture again.
- Select the picture that you want to crop.
- Under Picture Tools, on the Format tab, in the Size group, click Crop.
Portion of the Picture Tools tab showing the Crop button in the Size group.
Note If you do not see the Picture Tools and Format tabs, make sure that you selected a picture. You may have to double-click the picture to select it and open the Format tab. If you see the Drawing Tools tab, rather than the Picture Tools tab, see When I click a picture, the Drawing Tools tab rather than the Picture Tools tab appears.
- Do one of the following:
- To crop one side, drag the center cropping handle on that side inward.
- To crop equally on two sides at once, press and hold CTRL while you drag the center cropping handle on either side inward.
- To crop equally on all four sides at once, press and hold CTRL while you drag a corner cropping handle inward.
One of the six cropping handles
Notes
- To crop your picture to exact dimensions, do the following:
- Under Picture Tools, on the Format tab, in the Size group, click the Dialog Box Launcher
.
- On the Size tab, under Crop from, enter the size numbers that you want in the Left, Right, Top, and Bottom boxes.
- To reduce the file size of your picture and delete the cropped parts of the picture from the file, under Picture Tools, on the Format tab, in the Adjust group, click Compress Pictures. If you want to keep the cropped parts, you can change the automatic setting for the Compress Pictures feature.
- To undo a crop before you save your document, click Reset Picture in the Adjust group or Undo
on the Quick Access Toolbar.
- To outcrop (or add a margin (margin: The blank space outside the printing area on a page.) around a picture) drag the cropping handles away from the center of the picture.
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