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Crop-Thumbnails

By Volkmar Kantor

Content Management / Media Library & Asset Management

Reviewed by Abdul Hameid

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Crop-Thumbnails Review - In-Depth Analysis

Crop Thumbnails allows precise control over image cropping for featured and gallery images. Easily adjust the crop region to showcase specific image details.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.84/10

User Rating

4.6/5 (based on 67+ reviews)

Active Installations

40,000+

Update Frequency

Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

The plugin provides the functionality to adjust the crop region of cropped images. It adds buttons to the edit pages and media dialog to access a crop editor.

In the crop editor, you can choose one or more images sizes and cut off the part of the image you want. This plugin is especially useful for theme developers who want to keep full control over cropped image sizes.

If you want to dive even deeper, you can get information about the hooks and filters on the GitHub page of the plugin.

Comparing to Alternatives

Crop-Thumbnails stands out in the image cropping plugin category with several notable alternatives available for users seeking different features or interfaces.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Simple and easy to use interface
No ads or upsells, providing a clean experience
Efficient and fast cropping functionality
Highly rated by users for reliability
Lightweight with no unnecessary bloat

Weaknesses

Recent update removed the ability to click anywhere to crop, requiring adjustment of a resize grid
Cropping can be more time-consuming due to interface changes
Limited advanced features compared to some alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

With a strong majority of 5-star ratings and very few low ratings, users generally express high satisfaction with Crop-Thumbnails, praising its simplicity and effectiveness.

Positive highlights

'Incredibly Useful with One Caveat' - hotnewfilm
'Great plugin, easy to use' - yikai
'Really great plugin, nice support' - cezaro
'Clean, lean and so useful!' - jhtjards
'Does what it says on the tin!' - Hilary Caws-Elwitt

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Recent update changed cropping method, removing direct click-to-crop functionality
Cropping process can be more time-consuming due to the resize grid

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users looking for a straightforward, reliable thumbnail cropping plugin without unnecessary features or ads will find Crop-Thumbnails ideal.

Not ideal for

Those who prefer more advanced cropping controls or the ability to click directly to crop may find the recent interface changes limiting.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers all core cropping functionalities without ads or upsells, providing excellent value for users.

Final Verdict

Crop-Thumbnails is a highly rated and dependable plugin that excels in providing a clean, efficient cropping experience without distractions. Its recent interface update may require some adjustment, but it remains a top choice for users valuing simplicity and reliability.

While alternatives offer different features, Crop-Thumbnails' strong user satisfaction, lack of security issues, and free availability make it a compelling option for most WordPress users needing thumbnail cropping functionality.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Crop-Thumbnails plugin.

crop thumbnails

image cropping

media library

Screenshots

FAQ

The plugin do not add additional image sizes, it only provides functionality to edit the crop area.

You can use “add_image_size” inside your functions.php to add additional cropped image sizes. See “add_image_size” documentation.

add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'my_adjust_image_sizes' ); function my_adjust_image_sizes() {     //add an cropped image-size with 800 x 250 Pixels     add_image_size( 'my-custom-image-size', 800, 250, true );       /**      * The following image sizes use a dynamic value.      * USE WITH CARE      * Also the plugin supports these image-sizes, i do not recommend them!      **/     //a dynamic cropped image size with 500 pixel height and the width of the original image     add_image_size( 'my-dynamic-width-1', 9999, 500, true );      //a dynamic cropped image with the same ratio as the original image and 500 pixel width     add_image_size( 'my-dynamic-zero-height-1', 500, 0, true ); }

After you add the image-size any futher image uploads will produce a cropped image “my-custom-image-size” which you can use in post-loop:

if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {     the_post_thumbnail( 'my-custom-image-size' ); }

You can add the following filter in the functions.php of your theme to adjust the ratio of one or more specified image-sizes.
CAUTION: use only when the ratios are really close.

add_filter( 'crop_thumbnails_editor_printratio', 'my_crop_thumbnails_editor_printratio', 10, 2); function my_crop_thumbnails_editor_printratio( $printRatio, $imageSizeName) {     if($imageSizeName === 'strange-image-ratio') {         $printRatio = '4:3';//do override ratio     }     return $printRatio; }

Yeah, there is a way. After the crop-thumbnails-modal closed it triggeres a javascript event on the body element. You could use jQuery to cache-break your cropped thumbnail (in backend-view).
The event called “cropThumbnailModalClosed”. The plugin also provides a global function that could be called (only in post-edit-view and mediathek) to do the cache-break.
Example-Code:

$('body').on('cropThumbnailModalClosed',function() {     CROP_THUMBNAILS_DO_CACHE_BREAK( $('.your-image-selector') ); });

You can add the following filter in the functions.php of your theme to adjust the ratio of one or more specified image-sizes.
CAUTION: use only when the ratios are really close.

add_filter( 'crop_thumbnails_editor_printratio', 'my_crop_thumbnails_editor_printratio', 10, 2); function my_crop_thumbnails_editor_printratio( $printRatio, $imageSizeName) {     if($imageSizeName === 'strange-image-ratio') {         $printRatio = '4:3';//do override ratio     }     return $printRatio; }