Crop PDF
Trim a PDF's margins, together or one page at a time.
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About Crop
Crop PDF trims the visible area of every page, removing wide scanner margins or over-sized white space around the real content. Reach for it after a duplex scan came in with uneven borders, or when a page was captured larger than the material on it.
It only moves the page boundary. The content underneath is not redrawn, so text stays selectable. It is not a redaction tool, so anything outside the new crop can still be present in the file.
How it works
- Add one or more PDFs.
- Choose One crop box for every page, Trim each page to its own edges, or Set the crop area yourself, then click Continue.
- For manual cropping, drag the edges of the crop box in the preview, or type exact margins in inches into the Top (in), Left (in), Bottom (in) and Right (in) fields.
- Click Auto-crop for a starting point, and turn on "Crop pages separately" for a different box per page.
- Click Crop PDF and download your result. The automatic modes check every page first, so they take longer than a manual crop.
What cropping does to the file
Crop PDF rewrites two entries on each page, its MediaBox and its CropBox, so that both describe the smaller area. Viewers and printers draw only what falls inside it. Nothing is drawn again and no image is re-encoded, which is why text stays selectable and the file stays about the same size.
What lies outside the new box is not erased; it is still part of the page, and anyone who edits the page boxes could bring it back.
How the three choices pick the crop area
Both automatic modes render each page at 50 pixels per inch and look for the smallest rectangle holding anything not near-white: a pixel counts as content when its red, green or blue value is below 245 out of 255. They then add a 2-point cushion, under a thirtieth of an inch, on every side.
- One crop box for every page keeps, for each side, the smallest amount any page could lose, and applies those margins to all pages. Nothing is clipped, but pages with more white space keep some of it. Margins are measured from each page's own edges, so pages of different sizes stay different sizes.
- Trim each page to its own edges crops every page as tightly as its own content allows, so pages in one file can end up at different sizes. A blank page is left untouched here, but in the first mode it is left out of the measuring and still gets the shared crop.
- Set the crop area yourself takes margins in inches, measured in from each page's own edge, as one set for all pages or a set per page. Your numbers are used exactly, with no cushion added.
Setting the crop area by hand
The manual editor lays the first 30 pages over each other at partial opacity, so the crop box has to clear the content on all of them at once. Drag any edge of the rectangle, or type into the four fields. Each value is inches from that edge, and a page whose four margins are all 0 is not changed.
Auto-crop fills the four fields from what it detects on the pages currently rendered. It adds no cushion, so if a letter looks tight against the edge, nudge that margin outward. With "Crop pages separately" on, it measures only the page the navigator is on, while the preview behind it stays the blend.
Where cropping goes wrong, and what to do about it
Say a 30-page scan has a wide blank border that shifts a little from page to page. Choose One crop box for every page and click Crop PDF. Every page loses the same amount, the most that the page with the least white space can spare, so none is clipped. For pages that hug their own text instead, choose Trim each page to its own edges and accept that they will no longer share a size.
- A grey scanner shadow, a dark line at the edge or speckle in the margin counts as content, so automatic crop may trim little or nothing on that scan. Set the margins by hand instead.
- Several files can be cropped together and come back in a ZIP, but the manual preview shows only the first file you added. A box set for all pages applies to every file, while boxes set page by page belong to the first file's pages, so crop by hand one file at a time.
- On a page that looks upright only because it carries a rotation value, the box you drag or type is measured against the page's stored, unrotated box, so Top, Left, Bottom and Right land on different edges from the ones the preview shows. The automatic modes are not affected.
Frequently asked questions
No. Cropping only moves the page boundary (its CropBox and MediaBox), so viewers show just the area inside it. The page content outside that area is not deleted and can still be present in the file, so do not rely on crop to remove sensitive information permanently.
One crop box for every page finds one crop box that safely fits every page, based on the page with the smallest margins, so pages with wider margins may keep some white space to avoid clipping anything. Trim each page to its own edges crops every page as tightly as it can on its own, which can leave pages at different sizes.
The shared crop box is sized to the page with the least white space, so other pages keep some; Trim each page to its own edges removes that. If nothing trimmed at all, the scan probably has a grey shadow, dark edge or speckle near the border, which counts as content, so set the crop area yourself.
Neither. The page is not redrawn or recompressed, so text and images stay exactly as sharp as they were, and the file size barely moves because only the page boundary is rewritten.
Yes. In "Set the crop area yourself", turn on "Crop pages separately", then use Previous and Next to move between pages and adjust each one's box.
The Auto-crop button works from the pages rendered in the preview, 30 by default, so click "Render all pages" first to include the whole file. The two automatic choices on the first screen have no such limit, since they analyse every page.
Not by entering a size. Crop takes margins in inches from each edge, so you subtract: an 8.5 by 11 inch page becomes 6 by 9 with Left 1.25, Right 1.25, Top 1 and Bottom 1. To put pages on a standard paper size without trimming, use Resize.
Yes. Add the file, enter its password when asked, and crop it as usual; the password is only used locally to open the file in your browser.
No. Cropping runs entirely in your browser and the file is never sent anywhere. Your browser does keep a local record of files you add, and a copy of any that came off your device under 5 MB, on the Recent files page, where Remove and Clear all delete them.
Related tools
This tool ran entirely in your browser and nothing was uploaded. Your Recent files list keeps a copy of local files under 5 MB until you clear it. How your files are handled.