How to Crop a Picture into a Circle

What are the three moves?

That is the whole job. The rest of this site is what to do when a particular app or a particular avatar size gets in the way. The editor on this page is the same one as the home page, only smaller.

1. Add the picture by clicking, dropping it on the frame, or pasting it. The file has to be an image the browser can decode, under 50 MB. HEIC is refused with a message to convert it to JPG.
2. Drag the photo. The circle stays still. Pinch or use the slider to zoom. Arrow keys nudge by one pixel, and Shift moves ten. Crop fills the circle. Fit keeps the whole photo inside it.
3. Download PNG, WebP, or JPG. PNG is the one that keeps the outside clear. Open the square export if you need a square file for PowerPoint, Slides, or Docs instead of a finished circle.

Why start with a square?

A circle is a square with the corners masked. If the picture is wider than it is tall, a circle mask in another program often becomes an oval. The PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Word guides spell out where that shows up. Google Docs documents a rectangular crop, so the circle mask lives in the Slides guide. Exporting a square here is the boring fix that works in all of them.

Fit is the other honest option. It does not cut the corners off. It shrinks the photo. Use it for logos and for any picture where the edge matters. Use Crop for faces.

How do I know the circle will survive a small avatar?

Look at 24, 32, 48, and 96 pixels in the strip. If you cannot tell what the picture is, the crop is too loose or too detailed. Move the subject into the middle. The inner safe square is smaller than the circle. The geometry page calculates it. Profile pictures fail in that gap more than they fail in the file format.

A border can help a dark photo on a dark app. It is optional. Transparency is optional too. Many profile forms flatten the image onto their own background.

Which file should I hand to the next app?

If the next step is an avatar form, download the circle as PNG at the size that page’s chart allows, or at 512 when the chart says the size is only a general recommendation. If the next step is PowerPoint, Slides, Word, or Docs, download Square 1:1 and let that app apply the mask after the photo is square. Mixing those two exports is the usual reason a second crop looks wrong.

Check the strip at 32 pixels either way. A crop that looks balanced at full size can be an empty circle at chat size. Zoom until the subject fills the safe middle, then download once. You can repeat the download in another format without redoing the drag. The photo stays in the tab until you leave or replace it.

What does the editor refuse, and why?

Files over 50 MB are rejected with a short message. Empty files and files that are not images are rejected the same way. HEIC and HEIF are named specifically because phones produce them and this page will not pretend to decode them. GIF is accepted as a still image of the first frame, and a note says so. The output cannot exceed 4096 pixels on a side. A request for something larger is clamped, and the note tells you.

None of those messages send the filename or the pixels anywhere. They are written into the status line on the page. If a download fails, use the button again. The blob is created in the browser and the temporary link is revoked after the save starts.

What stays on this device?

The picture is not uploaded. Decoding, cropping, and the download all happen in the browser. Paste works when the clipboard holds an image. A bad file shows an error and does not throw you out of the page. Preferences remember format, size, and background, not the photo.

If you came here to follow a menu in a desktop app, pick that app from the guide list. Those pages say when the menu name was checked on a vendor help page.

What is the short version?

How to crop a picture into a circle, in one pass: put the photo under the round frame, drag until the subject fills it, and download PNG if the outside should stay clear.

Frequently asked questions