📐 Aspect Ratio Calculator

simplify · nearest standard · fit inside a box · exact scaling

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Three jobs done exactly once: simplify a width × height by their greatest common divisor (Euclid, ~300 BC, still the right algorithm), name the nearest common format with the true percentage difference shown so you can see when “16:9” is actually 1.9% off, and fit the frame inside a maximum box using whichever side runs out first — the way every real image resizer works.

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Why 1920×1080 is exactly 16:9 but 1280×720 feels the same

They reduce to the same fraction — 16/9 — which is the entire content of the phrase “same aspect ratio”: identical shape, different size. Resolution adds pixels; ratio only shapes them. That is why a 16:9 video letterboxes on a 16:10 laptop with black bars top and bottom (the shapes genuinely differ by 5.6% of height) and why “fullscreen” either crops the edges or stretches faces. The gcd on this page is the same reduction your maths teacher used for fractions — Euclid, Elements VII, still the fastest way to it after 2,300 years.

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