How to uncrop or extend a photo without AI

You can extend a photo without AI by adding canvas around it and filling the new area with content that no AI generated: a plain color, a blurred or mirrored copy of the photo, its stretched edge pixels, or patches copied from the photo itself. On uncrop.si, six of the eight fills work this way, in your browser, with nothing uploaded. If you cropped the photo yourself, undo the crop first, because that brings back the real pixels and no fill can.

Which uncrop methods use AI?

Method	Where you find it	Uses AI?	What fills the new area
Undo the crop	The app that cropped it	No	The real pixels you cut off
Color border	uncrop.si Color, Canvas Size in Photoshop or GIMP	No	White, black or any color
Transparent border	uncrop.si Transparent	No	Nothing: an empty PNG or WebP border
Blur	uncrop.si Blur	No	A blurred, slightly darkened copy of the photo
Mirror	uncrop.si Mirror	No	The photo’s edges reflected outward
Stretch	uncrop.si Stretch	No	The outermost pixels extended outward
Texture fill	uncrop.si	No	Patches copied from your own photo
Content-Aware Fill	Photoshop, Lightroom	Not generative	Similar content from surrounding areas
Resynthesizer Uncrop	GIMP plug-in	Not generative	Texture synthesized from the photo’s edges
Smart fill	uncrop.si	Yes, on your device	An AI model paints it; nothing is uploaded
AI uncrop, Generative Expand, Extend, Auto frame	uncrop.si, Photoshop and Lightroom, Apple Photos, Google Photos	Yes, generative AI	New content painted by an AI model

The last row covers the big brands’ built-in tools. Apple says Extend in Photos works with Apple Intelligence (Apple), Google says Auto frame uses AI to fill in parts of a picture or expand it (Google), and in Photoshop, Generative Expand asks you to choose an Adobe generative model before it generates the new area (Adobe).

People who search for an uncrop “without AI” usually want one of four things: their real photo left untouched, no invented content, no upload, or a result that is allowed where AI edits are not. The fills marked “No” above meet the first three. The fourth depends on the rules, which are covered further down.

Undo the crop first if it is your own photo

Uncropping in the true sense means getting back what was cut off, and only the app that made the crop can do that. Most photo apps keep the original:

• Photos on iPhone or iPad: open the photo, tap More, then Revert to Original (Apple). See how to uncrop a photo on iPhone or Mac.
• Google Photos: tap Edit, then Revert. Google says you can’t undo changes to photos you saved as a copy, but then the untouched original is still in your library (Google). See how to uncrop a photo on Android.
• Windows, Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop and others: see can you uncrop a photo?, which lists the undo steps for each app.

None of this uses AI, and the result is the photo as you took it. Only when no original is left do you need to extend the picture instead.

How to extend a photo without AI on uncrop.si

The free uncrop tool on our home page runs in your browser. It is free, with no sign-up, no watermark and no daily limit for the fills below.

1. Open the uncrop tool and drop, paste or choose a photo. It takes JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF and GIF files.
2. Under Canvas size, choose Aspect ratio (such as 16:9 or 4:5), Expand sides to add a percentage to each side, or Exact size for a platform size such as 1080 x 1350. Drag the photo to place it.
3. Under Fill the new area, pick Texture fill, Blur, Mirror, Stretch, Color or Transparent.
4. Blur, Mirror, Stretch, Color and Transparent show at once. For Texture fill, press Texture fill the new area.
5. Under Download, choose JPG, PNG or WebP and press Download.

One thing to watch: on a computer, the home page opens with Smart fill selected, and if its model is already stored in your browser from an earlier visit, Smart fill starts as soon as you open a photo. Press Cancel, or simply pick another fill. The fill that is selected when you press Download is the one in your file. To avoid Smart fill altogether, start on change aspect ratio or Instagram no crop, which open on Blur. On a phone, the home page opens on Blur too.

If you use Uncrop the result again, the current result becomes the new starting photo, so do it only after a fill without AI.

Which fills use AI, and which upload your photo

Fill	AI?	Leaves your device?	How it works
Texture fill	No	No, and it works offline	Rebuilds the border from patches of your own photo, like content-aware fill
Blur	No	No	A blurred copy of the photo, with Blur and Darken sliders
Mirror	No	No	Reflects the edges outward, with a Soften slider to hide the mirror line
Stretch	No	No	Extends the outermost pixels, with a Soften slider
Color	No	No	A solid color: Match edges, White, Black, Off-white or any color
Transparent	No	No	An empty border, kept in a PNG or WebP download
Smart fill	Yes, an open inpainting model	No: it runs on your device	Downloads the model once, about 62 MB, and keeps it in your browser
AI uncrop	Yes, generative AI	Yes, when you press Extend with AI	Smaller copies go to uncrop.si and the AI service that paints the new area, free once a day

The Photo check that suggests a fill, such as Stretch for a plain studio backdrop or Color for a screenshot, works out its advice with plain image statistics on your device. It uses no AI and uploads nothing. When a person or object runs off the edge, it may point you to AI uncrop; you can ignore that.

What stays untouched

With Blur, Mirror, Stretch, Color and Transparent, your photo is drawn as it is and the fill only goes around it. Texture fill, like the AI fills, softly blends the outermost pixels of the photo into the new area so the join does not show. Seam softness, under Blending, sets how wide that blend is, and raising it adds a blend to the instant fills too.

In Aspect ratio mode the photo keeps its own pixels and only the canvas grows, while Exact size fits the whole photo into the frame you set. The download is a new file. Choose PNG and Full size if you want every pixel without JPG compression. Downloads go up to about 40 megapixels on a computer and 16 megapixels on an iPhone or iPad, and photos over 24 megapixels are reduced to 24 when they open, so a very large photo given a big new border can come out a little smaller than the original.

What each fill looks good on

Fills without AI can only repeat, reflect or soften what is already in the photo. That works well on textures and fails on anything with a shape.

Your photo’s edge	Fill to try	Why
Sky, water, sand, grass, foliage, walls, fabric	Texture fill	Real patches of the same texture, with the grain kept
A landscape or a symmetrical scene	Mirror	The horizon and colors carry on; add Soften to hide the seam
A plain studio backdrop or a gradient	Stretch	The edge color simply continues
People, travel, busy scenes, Stories	Blur	A soft backdrop in the photo’s own colors that reads as deliberate
Products, art, screenshots	Color	A clean border, white or matched to the edge
Design work in another app	Transparent	An empty border to fill or layer later
A person, pet or object cut off by the edge	Blur or Color	No fill without AI can draw the missing part of a body or an object

The size of the change matters too. A small change, such as 3:4 to 4:5, adds thin strips that any fill hides. Turning a 16:9 photo into 9:16 makes about 68% of the result new area, by the arithmetic on our change aspect ratio page, and then a soft blur or a plain color usually looks better than repeated texture. For a big change with scenery, widen the photo in two smaller steps.

Other ways to extend a photo without AI

Add a plain border in Photoshop or GIMP

• Photoshop: choose Image > Canvas Size, enter the new Width and Height (or tick Relative), click a square in the Anchor grid to place the photo, and pick white, black, gray or another color from the Canvas Extension Color menu. Adobe says the command adds workspace around your image without affecting the image itself (Adobe).
• GIMP 3.2: choose Image > Canvas Size, set the new size, then set Resize layers to All Layers and pick Fill with: Foreground color, Background color, Middle Gray, White, Transparency (the default) or Pattern. The fill applies to the layers you resize (GIMP).

For a post at an exact size, our Instagram no crop tool does the same with a blur or white border at 1080 pixels wide, and portrait to landscape widens a vertical photo to 16:9, 3:2 or 4:3. Pick a fill without AI there too, because portrait to landscape opens on Smart fill on a computer.

Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop and Lightroom

Content-Aware Fill is Adobe’s older, non-generative fill. Adobe says it fills an area with the surrounding pixels (Adobe), and its settings control how Photoshop samples source pixels from your image (Adobe). To extend a photo with it in Photoshop (Adobe):

1. Make sure Use Classic Mode is turned off.
2. Select the Crop tool.
3. In the Options bar, open the Fill menu and choose Content-Aware Fill.
4. Drag the crop handles past the edge of the photo.
5. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac).

In Lightroom, the Generative Expand panel offers two methods. Content-Aware Fill fills the new area with similar content from surrounding areas and needs no credits, while the other method fills it with generated content and uses generative credits (Adobe). Pick Content-Aware Fill if you want to stay clear of generative AI. Adobe’s help does not explain more about how Content-Aware Fill chooses its samples, so if a rule bans every kind of AI assistance, not only generative AI, ask before you rely on it. More Photoshop steps are in how to undo a crop in Photoshop.

Resynthesizer in GIMP

Resynthesizer is a set of third-party plug-ins for GIMP that do texture synthesis. They do not come with GIMP, and version 3.0.1 works with GIMP 3.0 or later (GitHub). After you install it, the Filters menu gains Enhance > Uncrop, which enlarges the canvas and heals the new transparent border by growing the image from its edges, and Enhance > Heal Selection, which makes a selected area look like its surroundings (Resynthesizer wiki). It suits the same subjects as Texture fill: sky, water, grass and walls.

When a form, contest or newsroom forbids edits

“No AI” is not the same as “allowed”. Many rules ban any change to the content of a photo, and a blurred or colored border can break them just as an AI fill would. Check the rules of the place you are sending the photo to before you extend it:

• Passports and IDs. GOV.UK says printed passport photos must be “unaltered by computer software” and must not be a cut down version of a larger picture, and it gives the same software rule for digital photos (GOV.UK, GOV.UK). If a passport or ID photo is too tightly cropped, take a new one rather than extending it. Our guide to passport photo sizes lists the sizes to aim for.
• News. The Associated Press allows minor changes such as cropping and normal toning in its news photos, but says it does not digitally alter their content and that backgrounds should not be digitally blurred (AP). Other newsrooms set their own rules.
• Contests and stock sites. Each sets its own rules for editing, compositing and AI. Read the entry rules, ask the organizer when a fill is not clearly covered, and keep the original file so you can show what you changed.

How to tell whether a result contains AI

Files from uncrop.si say so when AI painted part of them. A file saved after AI uncrop or Smart fill carries the IPTC digital source type that IPTC names “Edited using Generative AI” and defines as editing with a generative AI model, such as inpainting or outpainting (IPTC). The label sits in the file’s XMP metadata, and the file name ends in ai-uncropped. Our free AI image checker reads that label on your device.

Files made with Texture fill, Blur, Mirror, Stretch, Color or Transparent carry no label, because no AI touched them. And any label can be stripped, like all metadata, so a missing label proves nothing. Other apps mark their AI edits in their own ways: Apple says that in macOS 27.2 or later, most images created or edited with Apple Intelligence tools include a hidden SynthID watermark (Apple). Our guide on how to tell if an image is AI-generated covers the labels, watermarks and checks for each.

Tips

• Start from the best copy. A sharp original gives every fill more to work with than a screenshot or a forwarded copy.
• Try Texture fill twice. Try another variation gives a different arrangement of patches, and the Quality menu has a slower Best setting.
• Hold to compare. The Hold to compare button shows the original framing, so you can see exactly what is new.
• Use it offline. Install uncrop.si from the browser menu, or add it to your home screen, and the tools you have used keep working without a connection.
• Extending a video? The same ideas work for video, with bars or a blurred background. See how to uncrop a video.