Decoding performance can vary based on sample density. For example, if you take an image of a 13 mil UPC-A, the symbol is approximately 1.25 inches wide at 200 dpi the symbol will be approximately 250 pixels across. A UPC-A symbol has 95 modules, so a narrow module will be about 2.5 pixels wide. SwiftDecoder will decode this image assuming the bar code is not damaged. If you now move the camera away from the bar code so you are now at 95 dpi, a narrow module will be approximately 1 pixel wide. It is very unlikely that SwiftDecoder will decode an image at 1 pixel per module unless you have created a perfect binary representation of the symbol.
Cropping an image does not alter the sample density of the image. Cropping an image will removes pixels, as long as you do not remove pixels containing the bar code, cropping the image will decrease the amount of time it takes to process an image.