YourPDFPal

Crop PDF

Not every PDF page uses its space well. Scanned documents often have excessive margins, headers and footers that distract from the content, or wide white borders from the scanner bed. Our Crop PDF tool lets you trim away the unwanted edges and focus on what matters. Set precise crop values for the top, bottom, left, and right — measured in points — and apply the crop to all pages at once. The result is a cleaner PDF with less wasted space. And like all our tools, processing happens entirely in your browser.

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About this tool

PDF cropping works by adjusting each page's crop box — the rectangle that defines the visible area when the page is displayed or printed. Content outside the crop box is hidden from view (though the original data remains in the file). This means cropping is reversible with advanced PDF tools, but for all practical purposes — viewing, printing, sharing — the cropped area is gone. The tool uses points as the measurement unit (1 inch = 72 points), which is the standard for PDF page geometry. Common crops range from 20 pt (a quarter inch — removing minimal white space) to 100+ pt (trimming off headers, footers, and large margins).

How to use

  1. 1

    Upload your PDF

    Drag and drop your file into the upload area. The tool displays a preview of the first page so you can visually identify how much space needs to be trimmed from each edge. Look at the margins, headers, footers, and white borders.

  2. 2

    Set crop margins for each edge

    Enter the amount to trim from each edge in points (pt). As a reference: 72 pt = 1 inch = 2.54 cm, 36 pt = 0.5 inch, 18 pt = 0.25 inch. A typical scanner margin might be 30–50 pt. A header or footer might be 50–80 pt. The crop is measured from the page edge inward.

  3. 3

    Preview the crop

    The tool updates the preview to show how the page will look after cropping. The cropped area is shaded or outlined so you can see exactly what's being removed. Check that you're not cutting off any important content near the edges of the page.

  4. 4

    Apply to all pages

    The same crop values are applied to every page in the document. This works well for consistently formatted PDFs where all pages share the same margins — most scanned documents, exported reports, and generated PDFs fall into this category.

  5. 5

    Download your cropped PDF

    Click 'Crop PDF' and the tool sets the crop box on every page. Download the result and flip through a few pages to confirm the crop looks correct. If some pages need different crops, you can split the PDF, crop each section separately, and merge them back together.

Common use cases

  • Remove excessive white margins from scanned documents to maximize content area on screen.
  • Trim headers, footers, and page numbers before merging multiple PDFs into a clean combined document.
  • Prepare pages for print by removing borders and setting exact trim dimensions.
  • Clean up PDFs before presenting or sharing — remove scanner bed edges and stray marks.
  • Standardize page sizes across documents from different sources before combining them.

Tips & troubleshooting

  • •Crop before using other tools like Merge or Page Numbers — clean margins make those operations more predictable.
  • •For scanned documents, measure the margin on the first page visually and test with a small crop (20–30 pt) to see how the preview changes before committing to larger values.
  • •If your PDF pages have different margin sizes (common with mixed-source documents), use the Split tool first to group pages with similar margins, crop each group, and merge.
  • •After cropping, verify that page numbers and headers you want to keep are still within the visible area — it's easy to accidentally crop them off.
  • •Combine Crop with Compress: cropping removes white space but doesn't reduce file size, while compression targets the remaining image content.

Frequently asked questions

What units are the crop values in? How do I convert from inches or cm?

Crop values are in points (pt), the standard PDF measurement unit. Conversion: 1 inch = 72 points, 1 cm ≈ 28.35 points. For quick reference: a quarter-inch margin is 18 pt, a half-inch is 36 pt, and 3 cm is roughly 85 pt.

Will cropping affect all pages in my PDF?

Yes. The same crop values are applied uniformly to every page in the document. If you need different crops for different pages — for example, cropping the cover page differently from the body pages — split the PDF first, crop each section with its own settings, then merge them back together.

Is the cropped content permanently deleted?

The crop sets the page's visible area (crop box). Content outside the crop box is hidden from view in PDF readers and when printing, but the underlying data technically remains in the PDF file. For most practical purposes — viewing, sharing, printing — the cropped area is gone. For permanent data removal, you would need to re-print the PDF which rasterizes pages.

Can I crop different amounts from different sides?

Yes. You can set independent crop values for the top, bottom, left, and right edges. For example, you might trim 72 pt (1 inch) from the bottom to remove a large footer, but only 18 pt from the top to remove a thin header, and nothing from the sides.

What happens if I set a crop value too high and cut into content?

The cropped area is hidden. If you accidentally crop into content, re-upload the original file and try again with smaller values — the tool doesn't modify your original file, so nothing is permanently lost. The preview helps you avoid this by showing the crop before you apply it.

Related tools

Split PDF

Separate pages with different margin sizes to crop each group individually.

Merge PDF

Recombine pages after applying different crops to different sections.

Rotate PDF

Fix page orientation before cropping — the crop edges change when a page is rotated.

Compress PDF

Reduce file size after cropping — especially useful for scanned documents.