This example shows how to crop an image to a square area.
<?php
$im = imagecreatefrompng('example.png');
$size = min(imagesx($im), imagesy($im));
$im2 = imagecrop($im, ['x' => 0, 'y' => 0, 'width' => $size, 'height' => $size]);
if ($im2 !== FALSE) {
imagepng($im2, 'example-cropped.png');
imagedestroy($im2);
}
imagedestroy($im);
?>