Images · Free tool
Free Online Photo Editor
The photo editor handles everyday fixes: crop a photo to a square or a 16:9 banner, rotate or flip it, resize it to exact pixel dimensions, and adjust its brightness, contrast and saturation. Every step can be undone. When it looks right, download it as a JPG, PNG or WebP file. The editing happens in your browser, so your photo is never uploaded.
Free, no sign-up Runs in your browser
Photo Editor
Crop
Drag the box or its handles. With the box selected, the arrow keys move it and Shift with an arrow key resizes it. Or type the values below.
Resize
Adjust
Save
Your photo is edited in your browser and never uploaded; nothing is sent to our server or stored.
How to use the Photo Editor
- 1 Open a photo or drop it onto the page.
- 2 Rotate or flip it if needed, then choose an aspect ratio and crop by dragging the box or typing the values.
- 3 Resize it to the width and height you need, and adjust brightness, contrast and saturation.
- 4 Use Undo and Redo to compare versions, then choose a file type and download.
What it does
- Crop with a draggable box and handles, free or locked to 1:1, 4:5, 3:2, 2:3, 16:9 or 9:16
- Rotate 90° either way and flip horizontally or vertically
- Resize to exact pixel dimensions, keeping the proportions if you want
- Brightness, contrast and saturation from 0 to 200%
- Undo, redo and reset, with keyboard shortcuts
- Saves at full resolution as JPG, PNG or WebP, with a quality setting
- Works with a mouse, a touch screen or the keyboard
Useful for small businesses preparing product photos, social media managers, website editors who need exact image sizes and anyone fixing a sideways phone photo.
Limitations
- It edits one photo at a time and has no layers, so download your result before opening another photo.
- There are no retouching, filter, text or drawing tools: it is for cropping, rotating, resizing and basic colour adjustments.
- Saving as JPEG removes transparency (transparent areas become white). Saved files do not keep the original's EXIF metadata, such as the date taken or GPS location.
- Enlarging a photo cannot add detail, so large increases in size look soft.
- Limits: 25 MB and 40 megapixels per photo; a saved image can be up to 10,000 pixels on a side and 40 megapixels in total.
Choosing an aspect ratio
An aspect ratio is the shape of an image: its width compared with its height. 1:1 is a square, 16:9 is a wide rectangle and 9:16 is the same rectangle stood on its end. Cropping to the right shape first means a platform or website does not crop your photo in a way you did not choose.
| Ratio | Shape | Common uses |
|---|---|---|
| 1:1 | Square | Profile pictures, product thumbnails, square posts |
| 4:5 | Portrait | Portrait posts in social media feeds |
| 3:2 and 2:3 | Classic photo | Landscape or portrait photos |
| 16:9 | Widescreen | Website banners, slides, video thumbnails |
| 9:16 | Vertical | Stories, Reels and Shorts |
YouTube, for example, asks for 16:9 thumbnails for videos and 9:16 for Shorts. For the exact pixel sizes of each platform’s profile pictures, covers, posts and adverts, use the social media image resizer, which lists where each size comes from.
Crop first, then resize
Cropping chooses what is in the picture; resizing sets how many pixels it has. Do them in that order: crop to the shape you need, then type the width you want and let Keep proportions work out the height. The maths is simple: new height = new width × current height ÷ current width. A 4000 × 3000 photo resized to 1200 pixels wide becomes 1200 × 900.
If you resize first and crop afterwards, the crop keeps the reduced scale, so you do not need to resize again. The information under the preview always shows the size you will download.
How the adjustments work
The three sliders use the definitions of the CSS filter functions in the W3C Filter Effects specification, calculated in the sRGB colour space:
- Brightness multiplies every colour channel. At 150% a channel value of 100 (out of 255) becomes 150; at 0% the picture is black.
- Contrast moves each value away from, or towards, the middle grey. At 0% the whole picture is flat grey; above 100% darks get darker and lights get lighter.
- Saturation changes how strong the colours are. At 0% the photo is black and white; above 100% colours become stronger.
Small changes go a long way: try a few percent at a time and use Undo to compare. Browsers do not all support filters on a canvas (MDN lists the feature as not Baseline), so where a browser lacks them the editor applies the same formulas to the pixels directly and you get the same result.
Keyboard and touch
Everything works without a mouse. With the crop box selected, the arrow keys move it, Shift with an arrow key resizes it, Enter applies the crop and Escape cancels it. You can also type the crop’s position and size in pixels. Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) undoes and Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes. On a touch screen, drag the box or its round handles with your finger.
After editing
Large photos straight from a phone are often several megabytes. Before you put them on a website, make them smaller with the image compressor. If you need a consistent look across your website, social media and print, our branding and design team creates logos, templates and brand guidelines.
Frequently asked questions
How do I crop a photo to a square?
Open the photo, choose 1:1 square under Aspect ratio, press Start cropping, then move the box over the part you want to keep and press Apply crop. The box stays square while you resize it.
Will editing reduce the quality of my photo?
Cropping, rotating and flipping keep the original pixels. Making a photo smaller reduces its resolution, and saving as JPEG or WebP compresses it, more so at lower quality settings. PNG is lossless. If you plan to edit the photo again later, save it at a high quality or as PNG.
Which file type should I download?
JPEG suits photos and opens everywhere. PNG is lossless and keeps transparency, which suits logos, screenshots and graphics. WebP gives smaller files for websites: Google reports that lossy WebP images are 25–34% smaller than comparable JPEGs at equivalent quality.
Can I undo my changes?
Yes. Undo and Redo step through your last 50 changes, including crops and slider changes, and Reset all returns to the original photo (which you can also undo). On a keyboard, Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) undoes and Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes.
Does the photo editor work on a phone?
Yes. Drag the crop box and its handles with your finger and use the sliders and buttons as normal. Very large photos can be slow on phones with little memory.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The photo is opened and edited by your browser on your device, and nothing is uploaded. It is gone when you close or reload the page.
Sources
Phoot Technologies
Need graphics that look professional?
We design logos, brand identities, social media templates and marketing materials that keep your business looking consistent everywhere.
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