Circle crop an image
Crop a photo to a circle or rounded square, with a transparent background.
Drop your file here
It is processed on your device — nothing is uploaded.
Round pictures with real transparency
Crop to a circle, a rounded square, or a plain square, with a genuinely transparent background rather than a white one. That distinction matters: a "circle crop" saved as JPEG is a circle on a white square, which shows as an obvious box the moment it is placed on any other colour.
The output here is PNG, which carries transparency properly.
Profile pictures
The most common use, and worth knowing: most platforms crop to a circle themselves at display time. Uploading a pre-cropped circle to a service that also crops gives you the corners cut twice.
Where pre-cropping genuinely helps is anywhere that does not crop for you — a website, a slide, a document, an email signature, a printed programme.
Cropping is from the centre
The largest circle that fits is taken from the middle of the image. If your subject is off-centre, crop to a square around them first — otherwise the circle takes the middle of the frame and cuts the subject in half.
The border
A ring around the edge, which is what makes a round avatar sit properly on a coloured background. White is conventional; matching your brand colour works well on a website.
Output size
512 pixels suits most uses. Go larger for print, smaller for an email signature where file size matters. Because the source is scaled to cover, asking for more pixels than the original has will soften the result.
Where PNG costs you
Transparency requires PNG, and PNG is a poor format for photographs — a circle-cropped photo can be several times larger than the same picture as JPEG. That is a fair trade for an avatar at 512 pixels, and a bad one for a large image. If you do not actually need transparency, choose a solid background and the file will behave better.
Common questions
Is the background really transparent?
Yes, and the output is PNG. A circle saved as JPEG is a circle on a white square, which shows on any other colour.
Should I pre-crop my profile picture?
Usually not — most platforms crop to a circle themselves. Pre-crop for websites, slides and documents that do not.
My subject is off-centre.
The circle is taken from the middle. Crop to a square around your subject first.
What size should I use?
512 pixels suits most uses. Asking for more than the original has will soften it.
Can I get rounded corners instead?
Yes, choose the rounded shape and set the corner percentage.