Photos on iPad don't crop properly

Jean have you tried to grab one of the sides of the cropping rectangle and not one of the resize corners? Sometimes that is working better for me. Dragging a corner will preserve the aspect ratio automatically, so I prefer to drag the sides. Crop, rotate, flip, or straighten photos and videos on iPad - Apple Support

Cropping can give strange results, if the image has already been adjusted with the straighten tool. Then the cropping rectangle in limited to the enclosed rectangle inside the tilted boundaries of the straightened image.

The lock is sometimes hard to see. Click in the upper right corner.

I'm not sure what you mean-- can you tell us in what way the cropping doesn't work for you? I do most edits on my Mac, but when I crop pictures on the iPhone I'm not having much trouble like you are suggesting. I have the same experience on my iPad.

Selecting crop on some pictures shows a little lock, which is handy if I want to maintain the same aspect ratio. This is on an iPhone, but the iPad works the same:

If I want to change the aspect ration I can tap the lock, and I'm in Freeform. Or, selecting the Aspect Ratio icon

keeps the lock for another ratio I choose.

Are there specific things that you find bothersome?

Jean167 wrote: …Firstly, I don’t get the little lock on all photos to adjust the ratio.

It looks to me like the lock appears on all my pictures unless I have unlocked one.

Secondly, when I start to crop it affects all sides at once so I get a teeny weenie picture & not necessarily the one I focused on.

I don't get all sides at once -- rather only the two sides near the corner change as I pull in.

The corners opposite that corner do jump in a little, but that doesn't actually change that side at all. For this picture I have removed the lock.

It doesn’t happen all of the but some of the times.

That sounds like a locked aspect ratio. Check that lock thing again, even if you don't see the lock on the picture.

It’s on my IPad not phone.

I get that. That's why I had said, "This is on an iPhone, but the iPad works the same:" I already had those pictures from my phone, and I thought they looked about the same, so laziness caused me to avoid taking more similar pictures. Perhaps you will recognize that the above picture is from my iPad