Is cropping a TIFF actually lossless?

Yes, as long as you keep a lossless output compression (None, LZW, ZIP/Deflate, PackBits, or CCITT G4 for bilevel). Cropping discards the pixels outside the rectangle, but the kept pixels are bit-identical to the source — no re-quantization, no re-sampling. Choosing JPEG-in-TIFF compression for the output is the one exception: that re-encodes the kept area lossily, so use it only when file size matters more than fidelity.

How are multi-page TIFFs cropped?

The same crop rectangle is applied to every page in the file. That is the right behavior for fax-style document scans, book scans, and CCITT G4 archives where every page shares a common bezel or header bar. If your pages have different content boundaries and need per-page crops, split the multipage TIFF into single-page files first, crop each individually, and re-merge with Merge TIFF to PDF for a single-document output or keep them as individual TIFFs.

Does the cropper preserve the source compression, ICC profile, and DPI?

By default the output keeps the source compression scheme (matching the behavior of the reference libtiff tiffcrop tool), the embedded ICC profile (sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, or a custom CMYK profile), the XResolution/YResolution DPI tags, and the bit depth (1, 8, 16, or 32 bits per sample). Switch the compression dropdown to override the first; the colour profile, DPI, and bit depth are always carried forward.

Can I crop a 16-bit or 32-bit TIFF without losing precision?

Yes. The cropper reads each sample at its native bit depth and writes the output at the same depth — a 16-bit RGB TIFF stays 16-bit, a 32-bit float HDR TIFF stays 32-bit float. High-bit-depth precision is one of the main reasons photographers, scientific imagers, and prepress operators choose TIFF over JPG; the cropper never silently downsamples to 8-bit.

Will OCR still work on a cropped document TIFF?

Yes, and it usually works better. Tesseract, ABBYY FineReader, and most commercial OCR engines benefit from clean inputs without scanner bezels, page-edge shadows, or stray fingertips. Crop to the actual document area at 300 DPI minimum (600 DPI for small text), keep CCITT G4 or LZW compression, and the OCR pass on the cropped file is faster and more accurate than on the raw scan.

Why is the cropped TIFF still so large?

TIFF stays large because it is lossless by design — even LZW or Deflate compression on a high-resolution photographic image often only shaves 20–40% off the uncompressed size. A 4000×3000 16-bit RGB TIFF cropped to half the area is still roughly half the original byte count (a few tens of megabytes), not "small". If file size matters more than fidelity, Compress TIFF lets you switch to JPEG-in-TIFF or step down to 8-bit, and Convert TIFF to JPG or Convert TIFF to PDF produce much smaller outputs for sharing.

Can I crop multiple TIFF files to the same rectangle at once?

Yes. Upload a batch, set one Width/Height/X/Y rectangle, and every file in the queue is cropped to the same dimensions. That is the right workflow for scanned-document standardization, microscopy frame stacks, or any archive where consistent framing matters. Each output keeps its original filename plus a suffix, and the whole batch downloads as a ZIP.

Does the cropper change my CMYK separations or alpha channel?

No. CMYK TIFFs keep their four channels and their colour profile; TIFFs with an alpha channel (e.g., from Photoshop) keep transparency intact. The crop is applied identically to every sample plane in the file, so masks, spot colour channels, and layer composites that the TIFF carries are preserved.

Should I use .tif or .tiff for the output?

The two extensions name the same format — .tif is the original 8.3-filename DOS extension, .tiff is the four-letter form Apple and most modern software now prefer. The bytes are identical. If a downstream pipeline expects .tif specifically (some prepress RIPs and older imaging libraries do), use Crop TIF to get that extension; otherwise either works.

Crop TIFF

Crop TIFF images with exact dimensions. Lossless quality, multi-page support. Perfect for print prep and scanner cleanup. Free.

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