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Tips for Using Edit-Crop Tools
How can you crop a PDF on Windows or online for free? How can you crop a PDF file with an Apple device? We explain two ways to crop a PDF.
If your PDF has elements that you’d like to remove, such as large blank margins or text that’s no longer necessary, you may want a crop feature. If you’ve ever edited pictures before, you may already be familiar with cropping. When you crop an image, you adjust the outer corners to reduce or adjust the amount of content that is displayed. If you have a PDF that contains pictures of you or someone or something, for example, you may crop the unwanted objects out to create an image that’s just of yourself.
Cropping functions the same way on PDFs, allowing you to resize pages of your PDF to get rid of certain content. There are a couple of ways you can do this.
Cropping a PDF on Mac
On Apple computers, a PDF editor tool is already available to you called Preview. This app has a lot of different features, including cropping.
To crop your PDF, first open the document with Preview.
Then, click the Show Markup Toolbar button so Preview displays the options available for marking up a PDF. Once you’ve done this, or if the toolbar is already open, select the Rectangular Selection button.
You can then draw a rectangle over the portion of the PDF that you want to keep. All content outside of that rectangle will be removed.
Once you’ve selected an area, click the Crop button. You’ll see a message reminding you that the content that you’ve cropped away isn’t gone but rather hidden. You can restore that content by selecting Edit > Undo Crop to see that content restored.
Cropping a PDF on Windows (Works with Mac, too)
Most Windows systems don’t come with a built-in PDF editor tool, but there is a PDF cropping tool available for free online.
PDF.Live’s PDF editor has a Crop tool that allows you to crop a portion of your PDF, so the entire page isn’t displayed. The PDF.Live crop tool is built into the powerful PDF.Live editor, which allows you to make edits and adjustments to your PDF on the go from your web browser. All you need is an internet connection to get started!
And by the way, PDF.Live works for Mac users too!
- Upload your PDF to the PDF.Live editor.
Drag and drop your PDF from your file explorer into the PDF.Live editor. Then, select Edit PDF.
- Click Manage Pages and under the Edit tab select the Crop Page icon.
Upon selecting this, your cursor will turn into a + sign when you hover over a page in your PDF, indicating that you can now crop your page.
- Click and drag on your PDF to crop a section of the page.
The section that you want to crop will now have a blue outline around it. You can further adjust the crop area by clicking and dragging the dots that surround it. You’ll get a dialog box that indicates which pages you want to crop.
If you want all the pages in your PDF to be resized to the area you cropped, select All. Otherwise, specify the current or specific page you want cropped. Click Apply when you’re ready to have them cropped.
This crop cannot be undone, as it effectively removes all the area outside what you want to be cropped. This will resize a page or pages in your PDF. Save a copy of your original PDF in case you want to start over with one of your crops.
The pages may be displayed differently afterward in the manage pages tab, reflecting the changes that you’ve made. Cropping does resize a page, so it may also print differently on a standard size of paper.