Make an image square without cropping
Fit a whole photo inside a square and fill the empty sides with white, black, any colour or a blurred copy of it. The square is as wide as the photo's long side, so 4000 x 3000 becomes 4000 x 4000 with a 500 pixel band above and below. Nothing is cropped or uploaded.
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How big will the square be?
The square is as wide as the photo's longer side, so the photo goes in at its own size and not one pixel of it is resampled. The border fills the gap on the two shorter sides, split evenly.
| Photo | Its size | Square | Border | Share that is border |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone photo, landscape (4:3) | 4000 x 3000 | 4000 x 4000 | 500 px above and below | 25% |
| Phone photo, portrait (3:4) | 3000 x 4000 | 4000 x 4000 | 500 px left and right | 25% |
| Camera photo (3:2) | 6000 x 4000 | 4096 x 4096 | 682 and 683 px above and below | 33% |
| Portrait feed post (4:5) | 1080 x 1350 | 1350 x 1350 | 135 px left and right | 20% |
| Full HD screenshot (16:9) | 1920 x 1080 | 1920 x 1920 | 420 px above and below | 44% |
Above 4096 pixels the square stops growing and the photo is scaled down to fit, as the camera photo shows. 4096 x 4096 is 16.7 million pixels, the most iOS Safari will draw, so the square can be made on an iPhone too.
The wider the photo, the more of the square is border. A phone photo gives up a quarter of it either way round; a 16:9 screenshot nearly half.
White, black or a blurred border?
White reads like the mat around a print, and suits product shots and anything shown on a light page. Black suits night scenes and dark feeds, where a white band would glare.
Blurred border fills the sides with the photo itself. A copy is scaled to cover the square, shrunk to 32 pixels and drawn back up, so only its colours survive. It hides the join best on a busy photo.
Colour opens a picker for anything else, such as a brand colour. The border is solid in every format, PNG included, rather than transparent.
Why not stretch it to a square?
Stretching a 4000 x 3000 photo into a square makes everything in it a third taller, or a quarter narrower. Faces, wheels and lettering show it at once.
So this tool never stretches. It either adds a border, as here, or cuts the long sides off, as the square crop does.
Border, crop or 1080 x 1080?
A border keeps everything and spends part of the square on empty space. A crop fills the square with photo and loses the same share of the picture instead.
A border suits a photo whose edges matter, such as a group shot or a product with its whole outline. A crop suits one whose subject sits well inside the frame.
To choose which square of the photo to keep, use Crop an image to a square.
What happens to your photo?
Your selected photo is processed in your browser, without an image upload to a server. The page may download code and codecs needed for editing.
Save your result before closing the tab; unsaved edits are kept in memory rather than in an online account.
Common questions
What size is the square?
As wide as your photo's longer side, up to 4096 pixels. A 3000 x 4000 portrait becomes 4000 x 4000, with a 500 pixel band on the left and right.
Type a smaller side in Width if you want less.
Does adding a border lose quality?
Not below 4096 pixels. The photo is copied into the square at its own size, so no pixel is resampled.
Saving as JPEG does re-encode the whole picture, as any JPEG save does. Choose PNG to avoid that, at the cost of a larger file.
Can I make it 1080 x 1080?
Yes. Type 1080 in Width and the height follows, because the box stays square. The photo is scaled to 1080 on its long side, so a 4000 x 3000 photo becomes 1080 x 810 with a 135 pixel band above and below.
What does Crop to fill do here?
It scales the photo up until it covers the square, then cuts the long sides off. Here that enlarges it, because the square is already as wide as the long side.
For a crop at full resolution, use the square crop instead.
For a square of exactly 1080 pixels, with the same borders under Fill the box, see Resize an image to 1080 x 1080.
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