Crop an image to 16:9

Where 16:9 comes from

16:9 is the widescreen video shape. It is the ratio of essentially every television and monitor made this century, and by extension of video thumbnails, channel banners, presentation slides and the hero images at the top of web pages.

A 1920 by 1080 image is 16:9. So is 2560 by 1440, and 3840 by 2160. The ratio says nothing about size — only shape — which is why a form asking for “16:9” is asking a different question from one asking for “1920 by 1080”.

Expect to lose the top and bottom

This is the crop that surprises people. A phone photograph is 4:3 — considerably taller in proportion than 16:9 — so cropping to widescreen removes roughly a quarter of the height. A portrait shot loses far more than that.

Which means composition matters more here than for any other ratio. Whatever you care about has to survive inside a band across the middle. If the subject is a standing person, a 16:9 crop will cut them off somewhere, and you get to choose where rather than discovering it after upload.

Watch for safe areas

Some destinations display a 16:9 image differently depending on the device. A YouTube channel banner is the clearest example: the file is 16:9, but only the central band is guaranteed visible everywhere, and anything outside it is cropped off on phones. Where a platform publishes a safe area, the requirements pages record it alongside the dimensions.

Then set the size limit

Thumbnails and banners usually have a byte ceiling too — 2 MB for a YouTube thumbnail, 6 MB for a channel banner. Crop here first, then set the limit, so the whole budget is spent on the part of the picture you kept.