Crop a PDF
Take the white edges off a scan, or trim a fixed margin from every page.
Drop files here
or click to choose from your deviceAccepted: PDF
One file per runUp to 20 MB per file5 runs per dayFree PDFs end with a small “Made with nouplo.com” lineRemove limits with Pro✓ Works offline
Your files stay on your device
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and you can even turn off your internet connection before you start.
Example
Example: trimming a scanned receipt off a Letter page for an expense report
A store receipt, 80 mm (about 3⅛ in) wide and 230 mm long, was scanned on a Letter flatbed, so receipt.pdf is a whole 8.5 × 11 in page with the receipt near the top left and white all round it. Setting: “To the content — find where the ink stops”.
- The page is drawn small and its edges are sampled: the commonest colour there, the scanner’s white, is taken as the background.
- The first and last marks that are not background are the receipt’s edges; 2 mm is left around them, so the page becomes about 84 × 234 mm.
- Nothing is cut out of the file: the crop box moves, and the rest of the scan is still inside, just not shown.
| Page | Setting | Trimmed page |
|---|---|---|
| A receipt on a Letter scan | To the content | about 84 × 234 mm |
| A Letter page with 1 in margins | Fixed margin: 25.4 on every side | 165.1 × 228.6 mm (6½ × 9 in) |
| A Letter page, ½ in off top and bottom | Top 12.7, Bottom 12.7 | 215.9 × 254 mm (8½ × 10 in) |
receipt-trimmed.pdf, a page the size of the receipt, ready to attach to the expense report. Because the trimmed part is only hidden, the file is about as big as before; if something on the page must go, use Redact PDF instead.
How it works
- Drop the PDF onto the box.
- Leave “To the content” to have each page measured and trimmed to where its ink stops, with 2 mm left around it.
- Or choose a fixed margin and give the millimetres to take off each edge. Every page is trimmed the same.
- Press Crop and save.
Frequently asked questions
- Does cropping delete what was in the margin?
- No, and this matters. Cropping moves the crop box — the instruction telling a reader which part of the sheet to show. Whatever sat outside it is still in the file and can be brought back by widening the box again. If you need something gone rather than hidden, use Redact PDF, which removes it.
- What does “to the content” actually measure?
- Each page is drawn small and scanned for the first and last pixel that is not the page's background, so a scan with a grey cast is measured against its own grey rather than against white. The trim then leaves 2 mm around what it found, so the text does not end flush against the edge.
- Are all the pages cropped the same?
- With a fixed margin, yes. With “to the content”, each page is measured on its own, so a page with a wide illustration keeps its width while the text pages around it get trimmed. A page with nothing on it is left at its original size instead of being cropped to a dot.
- Will it work on a page that is already cropped?
- Yes. The new box is measured from the page as it is shown now and is kept inside it, so cropping twice narrows the view rather than jumping back to the full sheet.
- My margins are in inches. What do I type?
- Millimetres: multiply the inches by 25.4. Half an inch is 12.7, ¾ inch 19.05 and 1 inch 25.4. Taking 1 inch off every side of a Letter page leaves 165.1 × 228.6 mm, which is 6½ × 9 in.
- Does cropping make the file smaller?
- No. Only the crop box changes and everything outside it stays in the file, so the size stays about the same. To make the file smaller, run it through Compress PDF afterwards.
- Is my PDF uploaded?
- No. The file is read and rewritten in your browser. Free PDFs end with a small “Made with nouplo.com” line; Pro removes it, along with the limits of 20 MB per file and 5 runs per day.