How to Crop PDF Pages

Cropping a PDF adjusts the visible area of its pages — effectively trimming margins or removing unwanted white space, headers, footers, or borders. This is useful for removing oversized margins from scanned documents, cutting away page borders added by printing software, or focusing on a specific region of a page.

Our free online PDF crop tool lets you specify how much to trim from each side of every page. No software installation needed.

Step 1 – Open the Crop PDF Tool

Go to our Crop PDF tool. You'll see a file upload area where you can click to select your PDF or drag and drop it onto the page.

Step 2 – Set Your Crop Values

After uploading your PDF, enter the number of points to crop from each side of the page:

PDF dimensions are measured in points (1 inch = 72 points). A standard A4 page is 595 × 842 points. A standard US Letter page is 612 × 792 points. To remove a 1-inch margin from the left side, enter 72 in the Left field. To remove a half-inch margin from the top, enter 36 in the Top field.

You can set different values for each side independently, so you can trim just the right margin or just the top, without affecting other sides.

Step 3 – Download the Cropped PDF

After processing, download the cropped PDF. All pages will have the specified amount trimmed from each specified edge. Review the result by opening the PDF to confirm the crop is correct.

Understanding PDF Cropping

It's important to understand that PDF cropping adjusts the visible area (the media box or crop box) of the page, but it does not permanently delete the content outside the crop area. The content still exists in the file — it is simply hidden from view. This means:

Common Uses for Cropping PDFs

Removing scanner borders: Document scanners often add a black or grey border around scanned pages. Cropping removes these borders for a cleaner look.

Trimming oversized margins: Some PDFs are created with very large margins by default. Cropping reduces the white space so the content takes up more of the visible area.

Extracting a region of a page: If a PDF page contains a diagram or chart in a corner, you can crop the page to focus on just that region.

Preparing for screen reading: Cropping away large margins makes PDF text larger and easier to read on tablets, phones, and e-readers where screen real estate is limited.

Removing headers and footers: If a PDF has large headers or footers with branding or page decoration you don't need, crop the top and bottom to remove them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will cropping reduce the file size?

Cropping adjusts the visible area but does not delete the hidden content from the file. File size may decrease slightly, but a significant reduction should not be expected from cropping alone. For file size reduction, use our Compress PDF tool.

Can I crop different amounts on different pages?

The tool applies the same crop values to all pages. To crop pages differently, split the PDF first, crop each part separately, then merge the results.

Can I undo a crop?

Yes, because the original content is still in the file. However, to restore the original visible area you would need a PDF editor that can reset the crop box, or simply re-upload the original uncropped file.

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