Cropping is a process where you cut a desired portion of a picture. Not always you want to keep the whole picture. But also some of us may find it difficult to use professional image software. In that case you can use the MS Paint shipped free with your Microsoft system. MS Paint has been packed with Windows from the very early versions and though it does not provide a very much easy tool to crop an image, but the job can be done with only a few steps as explained below.

Step 1: Open your picture in MS Paint

First of all, you need to open the image in MS Paint you want to be cropped. For this,

• Right click on the image and use “Open With” option to select MS Paint from the list.
• Or you can do it this way also, open MS Paint first from ‘Start’ -> ‘Programs’ -> ‘Accessories’’ ->’Paint’ and then use ‘File’ -> ‘Open’ to browse to your image to open.
• You can also open MS Paint by typing ‘mspaint’ Command in the ‘Start’ -> ‘Run’ dialog box.

Once you have opened the picture in MS Paint, you may see it in a one single screen or you may have to scroll around to see the picture depending on the how big the picture is.

Whatever, we have two option to select the desired portion from the picture.

• You can select a rectangular area using “Select” tool from the Toolbar. It will be in the upper right corner of the Tool Bar as a dotted rectangle. Once you click it a handle will appear on to your image using which you can select a rectangular area.
• Or if you want a portion from the image to be of any shape then you can use the “Free Form Select” from the Toolbar. It will be on the left side top corner of the Toolbar and can be identified as a dotted start. Once you click it, you can select any closed curved portion from the image you want with a pointer.

Step 3: copying the selected portion

• Once you have selected the portion you want in any of the above said two ways, you need to copy it.
• You can either right click on the selected image and click on “Copy” option or

• Go to the ‘Edit’ -> ‘Copy’ to get the job done.
• You can also use Control + C from your keyboard to copy the portion.

Step 4: get a new cropped out image

Once you have copied the portion you want, go to ‘File’ menu and open a new document using ‘New’ option.

You will see a new image window opened up. There,

• Either use ‘Edit’ -> ‘Paste’ to paste the copied image or

MS Paint

• Press ‘Ctr + V’ to paste the image.

Save the file with the desired name and format. And you are done. Just now you cropped an image with 4 simple steps with a lightweight easy to use software MS Paint.