Sometimes you need to make minor adjustments to an image on your website to make it fit a page's layout better. Thankfully, WordPress gives you the tools to make some of these minor adjustments directly inside the Media Library. This saves time since you don't have to open your photos in another program, then upload the new, edited version of the photo back to your site. You don't even need to leave your WordPress dashboard.
To get started, navigate to your site's Media Library using the menu on the left side of the Dashboard.
Once you're in the media library, find the image you want to edit and click on it. The image dialogue box that pops up has two sides. The right side gives you a variety of information about the image file, while the left side shows a preview of the image and an "Edit Image" button below it. Click on that button to access the editing panel.
This editing panel lets you make basic alterations to your images in several ways. At the top left, there are options that will crop an image, rotate it left or right, or flip it vertically or horizontally. On the right side of the panel, there are options to rescale an image or put in precise specifications for cropping.
To crop an image, either click on the "Crop" button or click and drag in the image preview. This allows you to freeform crop an image to whatever length and height you want. You can also crop an image to a specific aspect ratio, like 3:4, 16:9, or 1:1 (square). Let's say you want to crop an image in landscape orientation (or horizontal) to a square format. To do that in the editing panel, simply input 1:1 into the aspect ratio fields and click and drag in the image preview. You can readjust the edges of the crop preview box to whatever fit you need.
Once you've arranged the crop preview box as you'd like, hit the "Crop" button again and then click "Save." If you decide you'd like to go back to the original version of the image, just select the image and go back to the editing panel. Now, a "Restore Original Image" option is available on the right side of the panel. Just select that to restore the version of the image that was originally uploaded.