Crop an Image Center-Out with sips
Use sips -c to crop an image to a given height and width, cutting equally from the edges, entirely from Terminal.
Run `sips -c 1080 1080 photo.jpg` to crop the image to 1080x1080 centered on the middle.
01Command
Command
$ sips -c 1080 1080 photo.jpg02What it does
sips -c takes height first, then width, and crops symmetrically around the center of the image — it cannot offset the crop region. Combine it with sips -z when you need an exact square for avatars or social previews: crop first, then resample. Like other sips operations the crop is destructive, so duplicate the file beforehand if you may need the trimmed edges back.
03Risk
!Warning: Cropped-away pixels cannot be recovered — keep the original file.
04Undo
✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.
05Sources
- sips — scriptable image processing system (macOS man page)Evidence: Documents sips -c pixelsH pixelsW to crop the image to the given height and width, centered on the original.
Last verified: 2026-09-17 · Category: Media