Why Is My Circle Crop an Oval?

What exactly goes wrong?

A circle mask is often just an ellipse set to the image box. If the box is 1600 by 900, the ellipse is 1600 by 900 too. It looks like a stretched circle because that is what it is. The same mask on a 900 by 900 box looks round. Slides, Docs, and PowerPoint all hit this when the picture is inserted at its original aspect and then “cropped to a circle” in one step.

Side handles make it worse. Even a perfect circle PNG becomes an oval if you drag the left or right edge in a document. Resize from a corner and keep the width and height equal.

How do I fix a file I already exported?

Open it here and use Crop at zoom 1 if the subject can spare the extra width. Or open the square page, download the 1:1 file, and mask that square in the other app. Fit is the wrong fix if your goal is a full-bleed circle. Fit keeps the whole wide photo and shrinks it, which is correct for a logo and wrong for a face you wanted large.

The PowerPoint and Word guides follow Microsoft’s Crop to Shape article. Google Slides follows the mask beside Crop. Canva’s help uses a frame. Photoshop’s help uses the Elliptical Marquee with Shift, then a layer mask. Google Docs, on the Slides help page, documents a rectangular crop, so it does not have a circle guide here.

How is a deliberate oval different?

The oval crop page draws an ellipse on a 4:5 or 3:4 canvas on purpose. That file is supposed to be taller than it is wide. It is not the bug described here. Use it for a portrait frame. Use a 1:1 circle for an avatar. Mixing them up is how a profile form letterboxes a tall PNG and the face looks small.

If you are choosing the rectangle before you mask it, an aspect ratio calculator helps with the arithmetic. The oval page links to one. The bug on this page is solved by 1:1, not by a new ratio.

What should I compare before I blame the tool?

Save two files from the same photo. The first is a circle PNG, square canvas, transparent corners. The second is Square 1:1 with no circle clip. Drop the circle PNG onto a slide and stretch only the width. It ovals, which proves the slide is scaling one axis. Drop the square file, type equal width and height, then apply the app’s circle mask. If that one stays round, the editor was not the cause.

Measure the downloaded file in any image info panel. A circle export reports the same width and height. An oval export from the oval page does not, and that difference is intentional. If a chat app then shows a tall PNG inside a circle, the app cropped again. Start from the square file when you cannot control that second crop.

How do I check that the result is round?

Measure the file. The width and height should match for a circle. The preview at 96 pixels should look round on both the light and dark plates. If you place it in a slide and it stretches, the slide is scaling one axis. Reset the size and type equal width and height.

Nothing in that check requires an upload. The measurement is the image header on your machine.

What should I check first?

If you are asking why is my circle crop an oval, look at the photo’s width and height before the mask. A circle mask on a wide rectangle follows that rectangle. Square the picture and apply the mask again. Resizing with a side handle later is the other way the same oval comes back. You can stop hunting for a slider that claims to make the shape rounder. The usual answer to why is my circle crop an oval is that the photo was not square.

Frequently asked questions