How to Crop on Mac: Photo Cropping Easy Guides

Summary: This is a post that shares comprehensive tutorials to crop images on Mac, including using the Mac Photos app, Mac Preview, keyboard shortcuts, an online powerful image cropper, and a third-party app.

Are you annoyed by the photobombers or the discordant composition of your images? Find that the aspect ratio of the picture you took does not meet the requirements? Don't know how to handle imbalanced pictures on your Mac?

No worries, to fix these problems, all you need is to crop images or straighten images. Cropping is a basic skill you must master to create correct and qualified images in your daily life or workplace.

If you are still not familiar with crop on Mac, you need to learn image cropping techniques and skills to speed up your workflow. In this blog, we will share the most comprehensive guides on how to crop on Mac, from how to crop a photo on Mac Preview to how to crop pictures on Mac using the online image cropper. Let’s dive in!

Why Crop An Image on Mac?

Cropping an image is not just removing unwanted parts, it helps to optimize the photo composition, prioritize the important details, adjust the aspect ratio for social media use, etc.

Below we list the 5 main reasons why we need to crop an image on Mac:

1. Improve Composition

Sometimes, the original picture may not have a great composition. Cropping can follow the rule of thirds, center the photo subject, and focus on the main object.

2. Eliminate the Unwanted Parts

The unwanted objects, people, or background can sometimes take the focus away from the main object. Cropping can help you eliminate any part you don’t want.

3. Suitable for Social Media Size

Different social media platforms have different rules on image dimensions. Cropping can help you quickly get the correct image sizes to post on social media like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

4. Highlight the Details

If you want to zoom in on a specific detail of an image, you can crop it and then the original small detail is accordingly magnified.

5. Adjust Aspect Ratio

Whether it’s for print or web display, different projects need different aspect ratios. Cropping can help to adjust the photo dimensions.

How to Crop a Photo on Mac

Cropping photos is actually easy and there are many ways to crop images on Mac, including using the Photos app, Mac Preview tool, keyboard shortcuts to quick image crop, and much more. Let’s see how to crop pictures on Mac with the apps or tools mentioned above one by one!

Method 1: How to Crop Images on Mac Photos App

If you have cropped photos on your iPhone or iPad with the Photos app, cropping images on the Mac Photos app is super easy because the steps for cropping images are almost the same, except that you are doing it on a different Apple device.

1. Open the Photos app on your Mac, and find the image you want to crop.
2. Double-click the images, and click the “Edit” icon to switch to the photo editing page of your Photos app.
3. Find the “Crop” option at the top of the screen. Click it to start your picture cropping operation.
4. There will be a toolbar popping up on the right of the screen, where you can find lots of crop image options.
5. You can crop pictures automatically or manually. Even you can set the aspect ratio as needed, such as square, 16:9, 4:5, 4:3, and custom aspect ratios.

Click “Done” to save your cropped images on Mac Photos app.

Method 2: How to Crop on Preview

Similarly, you can use the Mac Preview to crop images if you find there is something unqualified about your image ratios. Here is how to crop photo on Mac Preview:

1. Open the images that you want to crop in the Preview.
2. Drag to enclose the area of the image that you want to keep by using the mouse or the trackpad.
3. When you are enclosing the image area, you can find the image crop dimension on the screen.
4. After selecting the area, find and click the pencil icon (also the markup button) on the top of the screen. Besides, you can click the “Selection” tool to choose different image crop shapes, such as Rectangular Selection, Elliptical Selection, and Lasso Selection.
5. Then, click the “Crop” icon on the top of the toolbar of Preview to crop images.

Finally, save your cropped images on your Mac.

Method 3: How to Crop Photos on Mac with Keyboard Shortcuts

If you have mastered how to crop photos on Mac Preview or Photos app, now it’s time to learn to use the keyboard shortcuts to crop images quickly on your Mac. Check out the tutorials to crop pictures with the shortcuts below:

1. First thing you should do is select the images that you want to crop on the Finder and press the “Cmd + O” on the keyboard to open the images in Mac Preview.
2. Still, you need to select the photo cropping area manually.
3. Then, press the “Cmd + K” on the keyboard to crop images.
4. Lastly, press “Cmd + S” to save your cropped photos.
5. Alternatively, if you are using the Photos app to crop pictures, you can press the keyboard shortcut “Cmd + C” to open the image cropping toolbar.

Method 4: How to Crop Images with Online Image Cropper on Your Mac

Preview and Photos are good and basic photo editing apps for cropping images. But if you want to make advanced edits, there are better options.

Fotor is an all-in-one photo editor with a rich variety of photo editing tools and powerful design features. Its image cropper allows you to manually adjust the borders to suit your needs, or you can choose a preset custom size for social media usage. Fotor also supports batch cropping, helping you save time when editing images in bulk.

Plus, it provides a lot more options to help you upgrade your photos with ease. The AI photo enhancer can optimize the brightness and color of your photos in just one tap. Also, you can add photo filters to make your photos look aesthetic and eye-catching.

Now let’s see how to crop an image on Mac with Fotor:

1. Open your web browser on Mac, and go to the Fotor website: https://www.fotor.com/
2. Click on the “Edit a photo” on the homepage. Upload the image you want to crop.
3. Choose the “Adjust” tool on the left toolbar and select the “Crop” option.
4. You can either crop the picture by choosing from the offered ratios or customize the crop ratio. Or simply drag the borders to eliminate the unwanted parts.
5. Once done, click “Apply” and then “Download” the image to your Mac.

Method 5: How to Crop A Photo On Mac With Photoshop

Photoshop is a great photo editing powerhouse. It supports basic editing like cropping and straightening an image, and advanced editing like removing scratches. It offers many ways to adjust the canvas size of an image, change the aspect ratio, or make the subjects within the photo better conform to the rule of thirds. Here we list the detailed yet easy steps for Photoshop beginners.

How to crop an image on Mac with Photoshop?

1. Install the Photoshop desktop version on your Mac and open it with an image.

2. Click the “Crop” tool in the tools panel.

3. Soon a crop box surrounds your image, and you can resize the picture by dragging the corner or the edge.

4. If you want to crop your photo to the desired dimensions, in the top menu bar, you can slide down to choose an offered ratio, or change the canvas dimensions in the Properties panel on the right side.

5. Once done, click the “√” button in the control bar to commit your new crop.

Tips When Crop Pictures on Mac

Here are some tips needed to consider when you crop an image on Mac. They can help you get a more satisfied result.

• Make a Duplicate

You can make a duplicate of the image you’re going to crop. If you make any mistake, it will not influence the original photo, and you can redo the steps to get the correct result.

• Edit Before You Crop

When you crop an image, generally its pixels will change. So you’d better adjust the tint, color, and balance of the image before cropping, so that the final result is as perfect as what you desire.

• Make Small Changes

Sometimes, small changes may be vital to get a successful cropping result. When you crop a picture on Mac, you can adjust the borers of the crop area slowly until you get the best result.

• Don’t Click Save Until You’re Finished

The changes you made will not be kept unless you click “Save” or “Crop” in Preview on Mac. But once you commit these changes, you cannot do other edits. So keep in mind that click Save until you’re sure about the final result.

Conclusion:

Learning how to crop a photo on Mac is a crucial yet basic part of the image editing process. It’s easy to do, but the ways change based on the tools or apps you choose. Above we’ve shared five useful ways: Mac’s built-in apps like Preview and the Photos app, the keyboard shortcuts on Mac, together with an online photo editor Fotor, and a third-party app Photoshop.

When you are cropping a single image on Mac, you can use the first three ways we introduced. However, you should use the online image cropper to crop images in bulk when you have lots of images to crop. Hope you find this blog helpful!