Crop PDF

Trim margins and focus the page on the content that matters

Cropping is the PDF operation most people don't know they need until the day they need it. A scanned book page has inch-wide white margins around every side that waste paper when printed. A PDF exported from a phone screenshot includes the phone's status bar at the top of every page. A landscape slide deck needs the top and bottom trimmed to fit a specific display aspect ratio. A published article has publication-brand strips at the page edges that are irrelevant to the reader of a private archive copy.

The OkFarsi Crop PDF tool handles all of these through a visual selection interface. You see the first page at real size, drag a crop rectangle to the area you want to keep, and either apply that crop to every page in one pass or step through the document applying different crops to different pages. The crop rectangle can snap to detected content edges (useful when you just want to kill the white margins automatically) or be set manually by pixel for precise control.

Cropping in PDF is non-destructive in an interesting way: the underlying page content isn't thrown away, only the visible crop box changes. If the PDF is later uncropped in an editor, the original full page comes back. That's useful because it means cropping is reversible, but it also means that if the cropped regions contain sensitive data, cropping alone is not redaction — someone with the right tool can still see the hidden parts. If you need the content actually removed from the file, use the Redact PDF tool instead of Crop.

How to crop a PDF

1. Decide what should remain visible

   Before uploading, look at the source PDF and note what you want to keep. 'Trim 0.5 inches off all four sides' is a simple uniform crop. 'Keep only the lower-right quadrant of each page' is a specific rectangular crop. Either works, but know your target before starting.

2. Upload the PDF

   Drop the file into the upload area. The first page renders at actual size with a draggable crop rectangle overlaid — this is the visual editor where you set the crop area.

3. Pick automatic or manual cropping

   Click 'detect content edges' to auto-fit the crop to the visible content (great for scanned pages with predictable margins). For precise control, resize the rectangle manually by dragging its corners, or enter exact pixel or inch dimensions in the sidebar.

4. Apply to all pages or per-page

   'Apply to all pages' is the fast path for documents where every page has the same layout. For a mixed document (cover at one aspect, body at another), toggle per-page mode and set each page individually.

5. Preview and run

   Check the preview thumbnails to confirm the crop landed where you intended, then run the job. The output is a new PDF with the cropped page size. Open it to verify the trimmed pages display at the right size in your reader.

Common use cases

• Kill white margins from scans

  Trim the wide blank borders around scanned book pages so they print efficiently and read cleanly on mobile screens.

• Remove publication headers and footers

  Strip branded headers, page-number strips, or publisher footers from an article PDF before archiving the content.

• Focus on a specific region

  Extract only the figure, table, or diagram from a page that has surrounding text you don't need — useful for presentation slides or research notes.

• Fit PDFs to a specific display

  Trim pages to match a specific screen aspect ratio so the document reads edge-to-edge on digital displays without letterboxing.

Privacy & security

Cropping runs on isolated workers. Because PDF cropping changes only the visible box, not the underlying content, cropped material remains inside the file and could be recovered by someone who uncrops the page. For truly removing sensitive content from a PDF, use the Redact PDF tool instead. Uploads and cropped outputs are both removed from our servers shortly after your download completes. Only anonymous job metadata is retained.

Frequently asked questions