7 Best Free Software To Crop PDF

Here is a list of best free software to crop PDF. In this article, you will find various software which are free and can crop a PDF file. Sometimes PDF files have extra margins on their pages. These extra margins and space make it uncomfortable to read and navigate through the PDF. To fix this issue, you will need to crop PDF and remove the extra space.

This article will introduce you to various methods to crop a PDF file. Some of these freeware crop complete pages of PDF file together, while some let you crop PDF pages individually. Some software auto crop PDF to remove white spaces or margins and some let you set margins to crop PDF pages. You can also select the desired area to crop through mouse cursor. Some software have options to crop PDF pages in groups, like: crop odd pages, crop even pages, or crop pages of same size. You can also crop a single page into multiple sections. All of these PDF Editor software let you crop PDF files along with other PDF editing options, like: convert PDF, resize PDF, annotate PDF, extract text from PDF, extract image from PDF, rotate PDF, etc.

Checkout the list of best free PDF cropper software, where you will also learn how to crop a PDF using these freeware.

My Favorite Software To Crop PDF:

PDF Scissor is my favorite PDF cropper software because of its method to crop a PDF file. It lets you crop pages of PDF separately, crop odd and even pages of PDF together, or crop all pages of PDF together. You can also crop a single page of PDF in multiple sections. The best feature is that you can select an area to be cropped with the mouse cursor.

You can also check out the list of best free PDF Readers, PDF Printers, and PDF Splitters.

PDF Scissors

PDF scissors is a freeware to crop PDF pages. It requires Java Runtime Environment to work and you have to add application’s URL to the exception list of Java. This list can be managed through Java Control Panel > Security > Edit Site List.

Although installation is a little tedious for this PDF cropper, it does its job pretty easily. It can crop all pages of PDF together, crop odd or even pages, or crop PDF pages separately.

Add a PDF file and choose an option from how you want to crop PDF file. Select an area to crop through the mouse. One of the options let you choose multiple crop area on a page or on different pages. Many other options are available which help you to crop a PDF file, like: delete selected crop area, delete all crop areas, set width of all crop area same, set height of all crop area same, split crop area in two parts (vertically and horizontally), etc.

Briss

Briss is an awesome software to crop PDF file. It lets you crop pages of PDF in multiple sections. It is very simple to use and you can preview PDF before cropping. You will require Java Runtime Environment on your computer to run this software.

First, you have to select a PDF file you want to crop. The main interface displays groups of pages according to size or even & odd pages. If all the pages of PDF are of the same size, a collection of odd numbered pages and a collection of even number pages will be sorted. If the pages are of different size, then this PDF cropper sorts pages according to their size. This means, all the pages of same size set are sorted in a group. All the pages of a group will be cropped in the same manner.

You just have to adjust the crop area manually according to the portion that you want to crop. If you want to crop out a new area on the same page, select it by clicking and dragging down the left button of  your mouse. You can crop out multiple sections by selecting multiple crop areas.

The Preview option shows you the preview of output PDF file. Crop option is available in Action menu, which lets you crop PDF after adjusting crop area.

PDFill PDF Tools

PDFill PDF Tool is a free software to crop PDF. Actually, it also has a set of 10 other PDF tools. The main screen displays various tools for PDF editing; one of them is Rotate or Crop PDF Pages tool.

A single click on this tool lets you choose a PDF file to crop. A new window will open after selecting a PDF file, where you can set various parameters to crop PDF and rotate PDF. It will tell you the total number of pages in selected PDF file. You can crop PDF by choosing a specific page number, landscape page, portrait page, all page, odd page, and even page. Adjust margins (left, right, top and bottom) to crop. You can also set a rotation angle manually to rotate PDF. Save the cropped file to a destination folder.

This PDF tool has many other features other than crop PDF file:

• Split PDF and merge PDF.
• Encrypt PDF and Decrypt PDF.
• Add watermark to PDF using image & text, add header and footer to PDF, and add PDF information.
• Create savable PDF Form Fields.
• Reformat multiple pages.
• Convert Postscript to PDF, convert Image to PDF, and convert PDF to Images.
• Create transparent image.

 

3StepPDF Lite

3StepPDF Lite is a freeware to crop PDF file. It lets you bulk crop pdf files together. This software also has various other tools, like: create new PDF documents, extract text from PDF, split PDF, merge PDF, watermark PDF, etc.

As the name suggests, this free PDF cropper edits PDF file in 3 steps only. Lets see how to crop PDF in 3 steps:

Step1: Add PDF files. You can also Remove any of the added files.

Step2: Adjust dimensions for cropping, like: height width, etc. You can adjust dimensions in points as well as percentage. It is good to use points for single PDF file and percentage for multiple PDF files. A preview is displayed on the right side of the interface, which helps you adjust the cropping dimensions properly.

Note: Page interval option is also available, but you have to pay before using it.

Step3: Select destination folder in which you want to save output files through Output Folder option and set default name of output PDF files by clicking on Output Names option.

PDF Rotate And Crop

Another freeware to crop PDF is PDF Rotate and Crop. It can rotate PDF files as well. It supports batch PDF crop processing. It lets you crop PDF by adjusting margins and rotating pages of PDF files at different angles.

Import PDF from folder or files through Import From Files or Import From Folder options. View added files in File List and preview in a different section. You can also use Zoom, Next Page, and Previous Page options. Select and fill values for left, right, top, and bottom margins. You can choose different angles to rotate. Process button will let you save output in selected destination folder.

How to Batch Crop PDF:

You can easily batch crop PDF with this free PDF cropper. All the process to crop PDF remains the same. You just have to select multiple PDF files or select a folder containing PDF files you want to crop.

One odd thing that I found here is, Preview section lets you view the pages of selected PDF file as it is before operation, but it does not show how it will look once you crop PDF.

PDF Shaper

PDF Shaper is a free PDF editor to crop a PDF file. It can merge PDF, split PDF, extract text from PDF, rotate PDF pages, remove images from PDF, delete PDF pages, add watermarks, add metadata, and encrypt PDF files. It supports conversion of PDF to Images and Image to PDF. It also supports batch PDF editing process.

Add PDF files and you can view all added PDF files in Files section. There is an Options section with tools to crop a PDF file. In this section, you have to set parameters according to which PDF files will be cropped, like: position of pages, height, width, unit for height and width, and select pages. You can also crop only selected page numbers of PDF files. Process lets you save output PDF files in a destination folder.

The free version is only available for personal use. You have to buy this software to use it commercially. All the features of commercial version are available in the free version.

Paint.NET Plugin To Crop PDF

There are two File Type Plugins which allow Paint.NET to open, crop, and save PDF Files. These File Type Plugins need Ghostscript installed on your computer to run. Let see how to open PDF in Paint.NET to crop a PDF.

How To Crop PDF in Pain.NET:

As mentioned above, you need to add two plugins to open PDF in Paint.Net, but Ghostscript needs to be installed on your computer beforehand. Ghostscript can be downloaded in 32 bit version or 64 bit version according to your computer’s configuration. The two plugins required to Open and Save PDF are ImPDF.Open.FileType v1.0 and ImPDF.Save.FileType v1.4 respectively. Download these plugins from here. Check out the following steps to enable Paint.NET to crop PDF files:

Step1: Installing ImPDF.Open.FileType plugin (enables Paint.NET to open PDF):

• Copy OptionBasedLibrary vX.X and OptionBasedLibrary vX.X.dlc to the Paint.NET folder, which is usually located at C:/Program Files/Paint.NET. Don’t copy these files to FileTypes folder of Paint.NET.
• Copy the two files ImPDF.Open.FileType.dlc and ImPDF.Open.FileType to the FileTypes folder of Paint.NET.

Step2: Installing ImPDF.Save.FileType plugin (enables Paint.NET to save PDF):

• Unzip ImPDF.Save.FileType.
• Copy the two files ImPDF.Save.FileType.dll and ImPDF.Command.exe into the FileTypes folder of  Paint.NET.

Now you can open PDF in Paint.NET and crop PDF just the way you crop image files. You can view all pages of PDF by marking each layer visible. Before saving a cropped PDF file, you can set various options which let you save PDF with all pages, some visible pages, and front page only.