Cropping is a fundamental photo-editing technique used to remove unwanted elements from an image, improve composition or focus on a specific subject.
You can resort to this operation to improve the balance and symmetry of a photo and to create visually appealing pictures that better communicates the intended message. For example, a shot taken at an event might include distracting background elements. By cropping, you get rid of those distractions and emphasize the main subject. This technique is also useful in adapting images to fit specific dimensions for social media, websites or print materials. This way you’ll make sure that your photos meet not only platform requirements, but also aesthetic standards.
Cropping is without a doubt useful in many situations, and this is the reason why many Mac photo editing software offer this feature. In this article we’ve compiled a list of the best Mac apps which satisfy your need of efficiently cropping pictures.
Preview
The first proposal in our list is the Preview app. After all, this is an article dedicated to Mac users and it’s only normal to first give the built-in solutions a try.
Preview is a versatile app that can serve a lot of image functions, including cropping. This is the process to follow if you want to trim a picture:
- Open the image in Preview.
- Click and drag your mouse to enclose the specific part you want to keep.
- Click on Tools in the menu bar at the top of the screen and select Crop.
In addition to cutting a picture, Preview offers other editing features. You can reduce the size of your images, rotate and flip them, convert them to various formats, annotate photos, as well as improve their overall aspect. If you’re dealing with a large collection of images that require the same type of editing, the Preview app allows you to resize, flip, rotate or convert them in bulk. Unfortunately it’s not possible to crop more than just one picture at the same time.
Price
Preview is free to use.
Photos
Let’s not leave the Apple ecosystem yet and take a look at another native app: Photos.
Photos for macOS was developed to not only view and organize your collection of pictures, but also edit them with the aid of its intuitive built-in tools. The app is equipped with a series of useful editing features, including the capacity to crop an image. What’s interesting is that you can remove unwanted elements in various ways. Photos allows you to crop automatically using the Auto button or manually by dragging the selection rectangle and selecting the area you wish to maintain. At the same time you have the possibility to cut images to specific proportions, such as 1:1 or 16:9.
Besides trimming, the app enables you to straighten a crooked picture, by dragging the integrated sliders to adjust its angle. It’s worth mentioning that Photos doesn’t come with a standard batch processing feature, which means you can only crop your photos one by one.
Price
Photos is free to use.
BatchPhoto
BatchPhoto is a powerful solution to batch crop photos on Mac. The app represents an excellent option because it is able to handle multiple images at once, it offers various cropping possibilities and it’s quite easy to use. To edit your pics, you just have to follow a clear, three-step process: add your files in Step 1, apply the built-in filters in Step 2 and choose your destination and output format in Step 3. Then hit the Process button, and let the software automatically apply your changes to all the pictures.
BatchPhoto offers you two methods to crop your photos: Auto Crop and Crop. The first option will allow you to customize your crop region and automatically crop images using a custom or predefined aspect ratio, such as 1:1, 16:9, 3:2 or 4:3. The second option will give you the chance to manually cut out the undesired elements. You can drag the rectangle’s corner handles and select the area you want to save or enter the new coordinates expressed in either pixels or percentage.
If you need to further optimize and retouch your photos, this tool is equipped with a large variety of features. You’ll be able to resize, rotate, convert, watermark or date stamp images, make color, lighting or contrast corrections or apply artistic filters. To boost your productivity, BatchPhoto lets you save your frequently-used operations as Profiles and easily load them in other editing sessions.
Price
BatchPhoto offers a fully-featured trial version, with a watermark stamped on the processed images. There are three available editions to choose from:
- Home: $29.95
- Pro: $49.95
- Enterprise: $129.95
All BatchPhoto editions come with a lifetime license.
Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo is an all-round image editing software. The program resorts to a mix of classic and AI-powered editing tools, turning into a great choice for both beginners and professionals. If you don’t want to put yourself to the trouble, you can opt for the AI-based tools that do everything for you. If you don’t enjoy auto-enhancements and want to take over, there are manual controls to fine-tune each image as you please. Naturally, among the multitude of tweaks you can perform you’ll find the much-needed features to crop and straighten images.
Luminar Neo enables you to cut your images in multiple ways via the Crop AI tool. You can do it manually by dragging and adjusting the cropping frame or based on user-defined or preset aspect ratios. At the same time you can take advantage of the Composition AI feature, which will employ artificial intelligence to automatically create the best possible composition for your photo. In the same place you’ll also be able to make perspective corrections. The Horizon Alignment tool will analyze your shots and, in case it finds distortions, it will correct them and perfectly align the horizon in the image.
Price
Luminar Neo is available with a 7-day free trial version. Afterwards you’ll need to purchase a license. At the time of writing this article, the 12-month subscription is heavily discounted from $421 to $69. The lifetime license is also substantially discounted from $577 to $99.
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is a complex photo editor built exclusively for macOS. The program boasts over 50 image editing tools, as well as features to paint, draw, illustrate or easily create designs with the aid of the built-in templates. This makes it an adequate tool not only for photographers looking to enhance their pictures, but also for design artists and marketers looking to create webpages, flyers, posters and more.
Pixelmator Pro places at your disposal diverse options to crop photos individually or in bulk if required. You can manually eliminate unwanted parts by selecting the Crop tool and adjusting the crop box as you please. To help you achieve the optimal crop, the program provides popular guides used in photography, such as rule of thirds, grid or golden ratio. At the same time you can choose to perform a crop based on preset or custom proportions and resolutions. You’ll find common print ratios such as 7:5 and 5:4, as well as image sizes such as 1920×1080 and 1024×768 pixels.
A truly interesting feature available in Pixelmator Pro is the ML crop. The software uses machine learning to determine the optimal crop for a certain aspect ratio and to cut the picture automatically. It’s worth mentioning that, in addition to cropping, this Mac app makes it possible to straighten images both manually and automatically and to correct the perspective vertically and horizontally.
Price
Pixelmator Pro comes with a trial version, which lets you freely use the program for 7 days without any restrictions. Afterwards you’ll need to purchase a license for $49.99.
Polarr Pro
Polarr Pro gives you the opportunity to make diverse adjustments to your pictures in an intuitive way. The app is easy to navigate, ensuring that you’ll quickly get familiar with all the work areas and enjoy a smooth editing process. You’ll find options to automatically improve your images, to apply filters and effects, layering and masking for more complex edits and optimization tools to flip, rotate, straighten and crop.
Cropping an image with Polarr is easy to do. You can accomplish this task freely, by dragging the corner handles of the rectangle and selecting the area to keep. You can also cut your pictures based on custom or predefined aspect ratios. To increase efficiency, Polarr offers the possibility to sync the adjustments made across all your images. This means that, if you’ve cropped a photo in a specific way, you can apply that same change to all the selected photos.
Price
Polarr Pro comes with a free version, which grants you access to a good amount of editing features including the one for cropping. If you want to use more advanced features and batch export your files, you’ll have to subscribe to a paid version. There are two options:
- $7.99 per month
- $47.99 per year
Click 2 Crop
Click 2 Crop is an image cropper for Mac particularly developed to accomplish this task. Because it was specially built for this purpose, it will help you get the job done as quickly as possible. With this editor you won’t lose time performing unnecessary actions. For instance, you don’t need to search for the crop tool – once the image is loaded, the cropping frame is already activated. Moreover, the program is able to process a large quantity of photos at once in a timely manner.
The way the app works is pretty intuitive and fast: simply add your photo and then drag the frame’s handles and begin cutting away unwanted elements. A large preview of the result will be available on the right side of the screen. You’ll also find the option to crop your picture based on a commonly-used aspect ratio. It’s important to mention that, once you add your image into the program, the app will automatically apply the same changes to all the images found in that folder.
To help you improve the image composition, Click 2 Crop places at your disposal a series of cropping guidelines, such as Rule of Thirds, Golden Section Thirds, Diagonals and more. Additional editing options include image resizing, rotating or flipping, adding text and borders, as well as applying color corrections and special effects.
Price
You have the possibility to freely test Click 2 Crop for 15 days. At the end of this period, you’ll have to acquire a license for $19.95.
Image-Batch
Image-Batch is a Mac app built for bulk editing. The program is designed to perform a series of operations related to image optimization, but the peculiarity is that it can only do it one at a time. This means that, for example, you can’t batch crop and convert pictures simultaneously. You need to complete one operation and then proceed with the next one. On the plus side, the software is pretty easy to use thanks to the clear interface.
Image-Batch lets you rename, resize, convert, watermark, rotate and crop your images. The app can also identify and remove all duplicates within a group of photos. When it comes to cutting, there are two main options available. You can crop a batch of pictures based on a custom aspect ratio or by a specific image resolution. The tool will allow you to select a custom crop position, but unfortunately the feature is not available in the free edition.
Price
Image-Batch comes with a Lite version, which lets you access essential tools and process up to 3 files simultaneously. To remove the file limitation and enjoy more features, you can upgrade to the paid editions:
- Pro: $11.99
- Premium: $24.99
BatchCrop
BatchCrop is another app particularly designed to crop multiple images at once on Mac. This is a suitable solution if you’re dealing with hundreds of scanned photo slides, documents or books that require removing the margins around them. The software is equipped with a smart auto cropping feature that will analyze the photo and suggest a crop rectangle based on the light, dark or document-type margins. At the same time, you’re free to manually adjust the crop frame, to modify the image coordinates and copy/paste them and customize other settings.
BatchCrop is able to do more than just crop pictures. The app comes packed with various features to edit your images. You can resort to an automatic or manual dust spot removal, resize, rotate and flip your photos, add text and frames, insert a watermark, as well as apply color corrections. The letdown is caused by the user interface, which looks rather dated and less intuitive in comparison to other programs.
Price
You can download and test BatchCrop free of charge. The unlicensed version will be fully functional, but it will limit the number of files you can process. The cost of a license is $49.
Croppola
If you don’t want to install a new app on your Mac, this is an alternative worth considering. Croppola is an online tool specifically designed to crop photos in an intelligent way. The process is super simple, as your only task is to upload your image to the platform. The software will then analyze the composition of that picture and find the optimal crop in a fraction of a second. You can choose from a multitude of aspect ratios, including for social media post, change the crop size, choose to crop the center of the image or a face if it finds one. In general, there are more than sufficient customization settings.
In case you’re not a fan of the auto mode, you can always go manual. The website enables you to manually eliminate certain parts of the image with the aid of the cropping rectangle or by entering the new image coordinates. To help you create a visually-pleasing composition, Croppola offers various guides, including golden ratio. On the downside, this is a one-feature tool, which means you can’t perform any other operation. Also it’s not possible to batch process images.
Price
Croppola is free to use.