How to Crop Pictures in Microsoft Word
Some basic tools are available to you
A picture is worth a thousand words—or so the cliche goes. The right picture, in the right format, can help elevate your Word document.
However, what happens if the picture is correct, but the sizing isn’t? A good way to fix this problem is to crop pictures in Word. You don’t needthird-party softwareto do this, as Word has some built-in tools to help you edit images in your document.
To crop a picture in Word, follow the steps below.
What Is Cropping and Why Do You Need It?
Croppingis the process of cutting out parts of an image that you don’t want to show. You might want to crop a picture of a person to focus on their face or to remove others from view, for instance.
Cropping can help you improve the composition, clarity, and relevance of your pictures. In Word, you might prefer to crop your pictures to help you focus on something important to the section of the document the image is placed in.
You can also crop images to help you free up space in your document or toreduce the file size.
How to Crop from the Margins of a Picture in Word
The easiest way to crop a picture in Word is to crop from the margins. This means you can cut off the outer edges of an image, keeping only the section that you want.
How to Crop to an Image to a Shape
Another built-in method for cropping images in Word is to crop it to a shape. This means you can make your image look like a circle, a star, a heart, or any other shape you want—as long as it’s a shape that Word uses.
How to Crop to an Image to a Common Aspect Ratio
If you have a preferred aspect ratio in mind, you can also crop your image to support that. For instance, you could choose to make your image appear more cinematic by choosing a16:9aspect ratio for the image crop area.
This can also be useful if you want to match the dimensions of your image with other elements in your document. To crop an image this way, follow these steps.
Editing Your Content in Microsoft Word
Using the steps above, you can quickly crop pictures in Microsoft Word using the built-in cropping tools available to you. If the built-in tools aren’t good enough for what you need, however, you’ll need to edit your images using third-party software like Photoshop orGIMPinstead.
Is the image that you’re using in Word in the wrong format? You canconvert your Word imagesto help you use and edit them. You can evensave your Word document as an image.
Ben Stockton is a freelance technology writer based in the United Kingdom. In a past life, Ben was a college lecturer in the UK, training teens and adults. Since leaving the classroom, Ben has taken his teaching experience and applied it to writing tech how-to guides and tutorials, specialising in Linux, Windows, and Android. He has a degree in History and a postgraduate qualification in Computing.Read Ben’s Full Bio
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