Crop PDF
Trim margins from all pages of your PDF.
Set how many points (1 pt ≈ 0.35 mm) to crop from each edge.
Crop PDF
Upload a PDF to preview pages
How It Works
Upload your PDF
Drop in any PDF. A visual preview of the first page appears for crop area selection.
Set the crop area
Drag the crop handles to define the area to keep. Apply to all pages or individual pages.
Download cropped PDF
The selected content area is kept; everything outside is trimmed. Download instantly.
When to Crop a PDF
Cropping is useful whenever you need to change the visible area of a PDF page without changing the underlying content. Common scenarios:
- Remove excessive white margins — academic papers and scanned books often have large margins that waste screen space on tablets and e-readers
- Remove headers and footers — strip repeating page headers, footers, and page numbers before repurposing content
- Crop to content — trim a PDF down to just the relevant chart or figure for use in a presentation
- Standardise page size — some PDFs have inconsistent margins; crop to a uniform content area
- Remove watermarks in margins — if watermarks are in the page margin area, cropping removes them (note: watermarks in the main content area are not removed by cropping)
Understanding the PDF Crop Box
PDFs have several "box" definitions that control how the page is displayed and printed:
- MediaBox — the full page dimensions, including bleed area
- CropBox — the visible area displayed in PDF viewers (what cropping changes)
- BleedBox, TrimBox, ArtBox — print production boxes, less commonly used in everyday documents
When you crop a PDF, we update the CropBox. The underlying content outside the crop area remains in the file — it's just hidden. This is why cropping doesn't significantly reduce file size.
Crop vs Other Editing Tools
- Crop — changes the visible area; underlying content outside the crop is preserved
- Redact — permanently removes content; use when sensitive information needs to be gone, not just hidden
- Remove Pages — deletes entire pages; use when you want to remove whole pages rather than trim the edges of pages
Frequently Asked Questions
Not significantly — PDF cropping changes the visible area (the crop box) but the full page content remains in the file. For true size reduction, use Compress PDF after cropping.
Yes — apply different crop areas to different pages, or apply one crop to all pages at once.
Yes — set the crop area to exclude the header and footer regions. This is a common use case for academic papers and scanned books.
Yes — cropping adjusts the visible area, it doesn't rasterise the content. Text, links, and all PDF features remain intact.
Yes — scanned PDFs are images embedded in PDF pages. Cropping works the same way and removes the unwanted image area from view.