Crop Photos in Photoshop: Tool, Selections, Circles, Masks, and Batch
This tutorial walks you through several reliable ways to crop images in Adobe Photoshop. You’ll start with the basic Crop Tool, then move into selection-based cropping, circular/shape crops, non-destructive masks, and batch processing. You’ll also see how to crop animated GIFs so every frame is affected.
Step-by-step instructions
Crop with the Crop Tool
Select the Crop Tool (C) in the Tools panel.
Drag the crop frame handles to set your desired area.
Press Enter/Return or click the checkmark in the top options bar to apply.
Crop to a rectangular selection
Open your image.
Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and drag a selection around the area to keep.
Go to Image → Crop.
Extract a circular crop via cut-and-paste
Choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool and hold Shift to draw a perfect circle around the subject.
Press Ctrl+X (Cmd+X on Mac) to cut, then Ctrl+V (Cmd+V) to paste onto a new layer.
Delete or hide the Background layer to keep only the circular cutout.
Non-destructive circle/shape crop with a clipping mask
Create a Shape layer (Ellipse or any shape) and place it beneath your image layer.
Position/resize the shape where you want the crop to appear.
Right-click the image layer and choose Create Clipping Mask.
Move or transform the shape or image to adjust the crop at any time.
Crop a single layer using a Layer Mask
Select the target layer and click Add Layer Mask in the Layers panel.
Create a selection with the Rectangular/Elliptical Marquee Tool.
Choose Select → Inverse (Shift+Ctrl+I / Shift+Cmd+I).
Go to Edit → Fill (Shift+F5), set Contents: Black, and click OK.
Choose Select → Deselect (Ctrl+D / Cmd+D).
Batch-crop multiple files with an Action
Install the .atn action file by opening it; open Window → Actions (Alt+F9).
Place all images into a single source folder.
Go to File → Automate → Batch.
In Set, choose “Crop Image Set”; in Action, select “Decrease Shape Circle Crop.”
Enable Suppress File Open Options Dialogs; set Source: your images folder and Destination: your output folder; click OK.
Crop an animated GIF
Open your GIF in Photoshop.
Go to Window → Timeline to display frames.
Use the Crop Tool (or other methods above) to crop; all frames will be cropped together.
