Crop Image 9:16
Crop image 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Stories: an upright frame opens over your photo at the largest size it holds, and you slide it onto the part that should fill the screen.
Drop an image to crop it to 9:16
The 9:16 vertical frame opens on your picture. Slide it to choose what stays. Or press Ctrl + V to paste one straight from your clipboard. PNG, JPG or WebP, up to 25 MB. Edited in your browser, never uploaded.
A 9:16 vertical crop
that fills a phone screen, top to bottom.
Every app you scroll with a thumb plays pictures upright and full-screen, and 9:16 is the shape they share. An upright phone photo keeps three quarters of itself on the way there. A sideways one keeps well under half, so the frame lets you choose which half.
Other crop shapes and sizes
The same crop tool, opened on a different shape or size. Each one starts with its frame already set.
Tools that pair well with this one
All free, all in your browser, no signup.
Why use Piknova?
A real 9:16 beats the app's auto-zoom.
What a vertical cropper should give you, next to letting the app guess or using a tool that fights you.
Piknova
What you get- Exactly 9:16, so the post fills the screen as framed
- You choose which slice of a wide photo survives
- Runs in your browser, on the phone you post from
- Full resolution, or Half size for a lighter file
- Free, no signup, no logo
Other tools
What you put up with- The app zooms in and picks the crop for you
- A fixed middle slice that halves the person on the left
- An upload and a wait before the frame appears
- A clean copy only after you make an account
- Somebody's logo in the corner of your Story
Drop, stand it up, save
Three steps in this browser tab, no account, 25 MB per image.
- 01
Drop the picture
A JPG, PNG or WebP. The upright frame opens on it at once, as tall as it fits.
- 02
Slide it onto the subject
Move the frame left or right until the person or the product sits where you want it. The dimmed sides are what goes.
- 03
Apply and download
Press Apply, pick half, actual or double size, and save it to your camera roll.
Step by step
Crop image 9:16 in four steps
The frame is already upright and full height when the picture lands. The one decision left is which strip of the photo it keeps.
- Drop the picture: Drag it onto the box at the top of this page, pick it from your files, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V. A 9:16 frame opens in the middle.
- Pick the strip: Slide the frame sideways. On an upright phone photo it only trims the edges, so this is a small nudge.
- Tighten if you want: Drag a corner inward to cut closer on a face. The frame stays 9:16 at every size.
- Apply and download: Press Apply and pick the export size. Actual size keeps every pixel inside the frame.
Sideways photo? Expect to lose more than half of it. The table further down shows what each kind of picture keeps, so it is not a surprise.
9:16
upright, locked while you drag
TikTok, Reels, Stories
Crop image for TikTok, Reels and Stories
TikTok, Instagram Reels and Stories, Facebook Stories, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts all play upright and full-screen. 9:16 is the shape they have in common, so one crop works in all of them.
- Leave the edges quiet: Every one of these apps lays its own buttons over your picture: the caption and username along the bottom, like and share down the right. Keep faces and text toward the middle.
- Mind the top strip: The top carries the app's tabs or a progress bar. A headline pressed against the top edge ends up underneath them.
- Start from an upright photo: It keeps three quarters of itself at 9:16. A sideways photo keeps well under half, so choose it only when the subject is narrow.
Posting a photo that is not 9:16 does not fail. The app zooms until the screen is full and cuts whatever spills over, which is fine until it cuts the part you cared about.
The shape
The 9:16 aspect ratio: widescreen, stood on end
9:16 is 16:9 turned upright: nine units across for every sixteen down, about 0.56 to 1. Every size in it is a widescreen size with its two numbers swapped.
| Name | Pixels | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| 720p, upright | 720 x 1280 | Older phones and small previews |
| 1080p, upright | 1080 x 1920 | The usual full-screen post |
| 1440p, upright | 1440 x 2560 | Sharper phone screens |
| 4K, upright | 2160 x 3840 | YouTube's recommended Shorts thumbnail |
Not long ago filming upright had a mocking nickname, vertical video syndrome. Then Snapchat put full-screen Stories on phones in 2013, Instagram added its own in 2016, and TikTok and YouTube Shorts built whole apps around the shape.
Phones kept getting taller meanwhile. An iPhone 15 screen is 1179 by 2556 pixels, closer to 9:19.5, so on newer phones the app fills the extra height with its own buttons or trims a sliver off your picture's sides.
Further reading
Sideways photos
Landscape to vertical: what a sideways photo keeps
Turning a landscape photo into a 9:16 vertical is a crop, not a rotation. You keep one upright strip and the rest goes, so the choice of strip is the whole job.
| Picture | Size | Largest 9:16 crop | Share kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone photo, upright | 3024 x 4032 | 2268 x 4032 px | 75% |
| Phone photo, sideways | 4032 x 3024 | 1701 x 3024 px | 42.2% |
| Camera photo, upright | 4000 x 6000 | 3375 x 6000 px | 84.4% |
| Camera photo, sideways | 6000 x 4000 | 2250 x 4000 px | 37.5% |
| Full HD screenshot | 1920 x 1080 | 608 x 1080 px | 31.7% |
- One subject survives, a group does not: A single person in a sideways shot crops to 9:16 nicely. Three people in a row lose at least one, so try 4:5 or a square for that picture.
- Tall things win: A doorway, a tree, a person standing, a bottle on a table. Anything taller than it is wide keeps its whole shape.
- A wide screenshot is too small: A 1920 by 1080 screenshot has a 9:16 strip only 1080 pixels tall and about 608 wide. The app will stretch that, and it will look it.
Exact pixels
Crop to 1080x1920 without losing the scene
Typing 1080 and 1920 into the crop box cuts a window that many pixels wide out of the photo. On a 12 megapixel picture that is a tight zoom, not a smaller copy of the frame you wanted.
- Crop the largest 9:16: Leave the frame as it opened, slide it onto the subject and press Apply. An upright phone photo gives 2268 by 4032.
- Scale it to 1080 wide: Open the result in the image resizer with the ratio locked and set the width to 1080. The height lands on 1920.
- Or halve a 4K crop: Type 2160 by 3840 into the crop, which fits inside an upright phone photo, then export at Half size for 1080 by 1920 in one tool.
The crop never scales up, so a picture whose 9:16 strip is under 1920 pixels tall stays that size. The apps will enlarge it on screen, and a phone screen at arm's length forgives more than you would think.
9:16 crop: common questions
What people ask when a picture has to fill a phone screen.
Any size where the height is sixteen ninths of the width. 1080 by 1920 is the everyday one, with 720 by 1280 below it and 2160 by 3840 above.
An upright 12 megapixel phone photo gives 2268 by 4032 at 9:16, more than enough for any of them.
Same shape, turned 90 degrees. 16:9 is wide, for TVs and YouTube videos, and 9:16 is tall, for phones held upright.
The numbers swap too: 1920 by 1080 lying down becomes 1080 by 1920 standing up.
YouTube Help lists 9:16 for Shorts thumbnails, recommends 2160 by 3840, and takes JPG or PNG.
An upright phone photo cropped here at 9:16 comes out at 2268 by 4032. Scale it to 2160 wide in the image resizer and the height lands on 3840.
Most new phones are taller than 9:16, so the app fills the screen by zooming a little and trimming the sides, or it lays buttons over the edges.
Keep faces and words away from all four edges and neither costs you anything.
Yes, and it loses less than you expect. An upright iPhone 15 screenshot, 1179 by 2556, crops to 1179 by 2096, a strip off each end about where the clock and the home bar sit.
Paste it straight in with Ctrl+V on a computer, or pick it from your photos on a phone.
Often you cannot, not from a sideways shot. 9:16 keeps under half of a landscape photo, which is one or two people from a row of four.
Crop the group to 4:5 or a square for the feed, and save 9:16 for a single subject.
Tall enough for the whole screen.
Drop the picture, slide the 9:16 frame onto the subject, and download it at full resolution. Free, with no signup.