Circle Crop Image

Crop a photo into a circle with a transparent background — free, instant, entirely on your device.

How to crop an image into a circle

Drop your photo into the box above and it's automatically center-cropped to a square, then masked into a circle with everything outside it made transparent, and exported as a PNG ready to download.

For example, a square headshot can be turned into a round avatar here for use in a profile picture, a team page, or a badge design, without needing a design tool with layer masking.

Why the output is always PNG

A circular crop only makes visual sense with a transparent background outside the circle, and JPG can't represent transparency at all. That's why this tool always exports a PNG, regardless of what format you uploaded.

Where a circle crop is used

Most apps that display a circular avatar are actually just masking a square image into a circle behind the scenes — which means the corners of your square photo get hidden, but you don't get to choose exactly how. Cropping to a circle yourself first gives you direct control over framing, so nothing important ends up hidden behind the mask.

This is especially useful for logos and icons destined for a round badge, sticker, or profile frame, where the background needs to read cleanly as transparent right up to the circular edge — the output here is a PNG with real transparency outside the circle, not just a square photo that happens to look round in one particular app.

Why the output is a PNG

JPG can't represent transparency at all, so a circular crop saved as JPG would need a solid color filled in behind it — almost always the wrong choice once the image lands on a background that doesn't match. PNG supports true transparency, so the area outside the circle stays genuinely see-through no matter what background it's placed on later.

The crop and transparency mask are both generated using the Canvas API directly in your browser, so you can preview the result immediately and adjust the circle's position before saving.

A quick checklist before you download

Double-check that your subject's face or logo sits comfortably within the circular boundary rather than right at its edge, since anything too close to the edge risks looking cropped once the platform applies its own circular mask on top. It also helps to view the result at a small size before finalizing — most circular avatars display quite small in practice, so what reads fine zoomed in may look cramped once shrunk down.

Frequently asked questions