Uncrop a photo

What “uncropping” really means

Nothing can recover the exact pixels a crop deleted — that information is gone the moment the file is saved. What can be done, and what this tool does, is generate new background that plausibly continues the photo outwards: more of the same wall, sky, grass, road or interior, extended until the image fills the shape you need.

For most real uses that is exactly as good, because the part that mattered — the subject — was never the bit that got cut. What you lost was context, and context is precisely what the AI is good at inventing.

When people need this

• A profile picture cropped square that now has to be a wide banner.
• A photo where someone's head or feet were clipped by a careless crop.
• An old image saved at one shape that a website, print size or frame now needs at another.
• A screenshot or download that arrived pre-cropped, with no original to go back to.

How to do it

Upload the cropped photo, choose the shape you want it to become, and set an anchor under Outpaint Options if the new space should go mostly to one side — anchor bottom to add sky above, anchor centre to grow evenly in every direction. The AI extends the background, and you get a blurred preview for free.

If the first attempt does not convince, regenerate. It costs nothing and each attempt is a genuinely different roll, so a result that reads as two images stuck together usually resolves in an attempt or two. You pay £1.50 only when you want the full-resolution file.

What it will not do

It will not reconstruct a specific thing you know used to be there — if a person was cropped out of the left of the frame, uncropping does not bring them back, it fills that space with more background. It also never invents new people in empty space, though it will complete someone already clipped at the edge.

Common questions

Can you really uncrop an image?

Not literally — the cropped pixels are gone for good. What AI outpainting does is generate new background that continues the photo outwards, so it fills a larger frame again without cropping or stretching the part you kept.

Does it change the part of the photo I still have?

No. Your original pixels are composited back over the generated canvas, so the picture you uploaded comes back untouched, surrounded by more of the scene.

What does it cost?

£1.50 per image, paid once, with no account or subscription. The blurred preview and every regeneration are free, so you only pay for a result you have already seen and liked.

What file types can I upload?

JPEG, PNG and WebP up to 10MB. iPhone HEIC files should be exported as JPEG first.