Crop a PDF

Cropping is the process of removing parts of an image or document to focus on the most important elements. For example, in photography, it’s often used to improve composition by focusing more tightly on the subject and losing ‘dead’ space around it. The same principles apply to cropping a professional document like a PDF – it can help you to remove unnecessary information to help draw attention to the content that matters.

It's simple to crop a single page PDF with Acrobat. In our PDF cropper tool, simply upload your file. Then, drag the cropping border to exactly how you need it. Press Crop, select Save, job done.

It's easy to crop multiple pages at once with Adobe Acrobat online. First, select a crop area on a single page. You can then apply the crop to multiple PDF pages at once using a page range.

Cropping a PDF doesn't reduce file size. Instead, it hides file content, but doesn't discard it. This makes it easy to reset page size later if needed.

If you need to organise your PDF pages, you can download a 7-day free trial of Adobe Acrobat Pro. This makes it easy to delete, extract, insert or rearrange PDF pages. You can also use our Acrobat online tools for a number of handy tasks, like converting and rotating your files.

There are lots of ways you can edit your PDF documents for free using Adobe’s online tools. As well as cropping your PDFs, you can merge or split your PDFs, delete PDF pages, reorder them or add page numbers. You can do all of this for free, online. But for more advanced PDF-editing features, consider downloading Adobe Acrobat Pro.

PDF Set Page Boxes are a feature on Acrobat Pro that detail the structure and dimensions of your PDF document as you prepare it to be printed or displayed online.

• MediaBox is the full-size page as it appears on-screen.
• CropBox is the full-page with the area that will be printed or displayed marked up.
• TrimBox is the dimensions of what will be printed as the final artwork or document.
• BleedBox is the border of white space outside between the trim line and the final border.
• ArtBox shows the meaningful content within the crop – normally the artwork.

This is a more advanced PDF feature aimed mostly at people who are printing documents like pamphlets, artworks, and labels, etc. You can get a free 7-day trial of Acrobat Pro to explore these features for yourself.