Crop an image into a circle
Drag a circle over a face or logo, press Generate, and download a square PNG with transparent corners — cut on your own device, nothing uploaded.
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The team page on your company site shows every photo as a plain square, the email-signature template has no rounding option, and the Google Slides deck you were sent renders whatever you paste exactly as-is. So the circle has to live inside the file: a headshot, logo or mascot whose four corners are genuinely transparent, not white, so it sits cleanly on a dark banner, a colored slide or a photo background.
This page opens with the Crop ratio already set to Circle and the output preselected as PNG, the format that stores the alpha channel those corners need. Press Crop on the image card, drag the circle over the part you want and pull the handles to size it (it never turns into an oval), then Generate. Skip the cropper and the tool cuts the largest centered square on its own.
The cut happens on a canvas inside your browser: the selection is drawn, clipped by the circle and saved as a PNG on your device, so a 12-megapixel phone photo takes about as long as a screenshot and nothing waits in a server queue. Drop a whole folder of team headshots and they all come back in a single .zip.
How it works
Three steps; only the second one needs a decision.
Add the photo or logo
Choose images, drag them onto the page, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V on desktop. JPG, PNG, WebP, iPhone HEIC, GIF (first frame), BMP, SVG and AVIF all open, and you can add several at once for a batch of avatars.
Place the circle
In the settings panel the Crop ratio is already on Circle and the format on PNG. Press Crop on a card to open the cropper, drag the circle to center a face or mark and use the handles to grow or shrink it. On a phone the same drag works with a finger.
Generate and download
Press Generate images. Each card shows the output size in pixels, the PNG tag and the file size, and Compare puts the cutout next to the original. Download one file, or Download all (.zip) for the batch.
Why the file has to be a PNG, and what happens if you pick JPG
A circle cut from a square leaves four empty corners. PNG and WebP store that emptiness as an alpha channel; JPG, BMP and PDF cannot, since every pixel in them must be a color. So this page opens on PNG, and the JPG button does not stick: pick it with the circle active and the tool still writes a PNG instead of painting the corners white.
WebP works too: the same transparent corners in a smaller file, which is what WhatsApp and Telegram sticker packs expect (512 × 512, under 100 KB).
| Format | Corners | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| PNG | Transparent | Avatars, logos, slides, email signatures, emoji: the safe default |
| WebP | Transparent | Sticker packs and sites you control; about 25–35% smaller |
| JPG | Not possible here | Falls back to PNG; use the Crop image page for a square JPG |
You may not need the circle baked in
Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Instagram, X, Google and Zoom take a square upload and draw the round or rounded mask themselves. Give them a circle PNG and they cut their own circle out of yours: the transparent corners are never seen. For those, a plain 1:1 crop on the Crop image page is the better upload.
The circle inside the file matters when nothing downstream rounds it: a team page that shows images as-is, an email signature, a Google Slides or PowerPoint deck, a custom emoji (Slack and Discord show them at 128 × 128), a sticker, a logo over video, a printed badge.
Output size, edge quality and the limits
There is no width field here: the PNG is exactly as large as the circle you drew, so an 800-px circle gives an 800 × 800 file. Skip the cropper and the largest centered square is used: a 4032 × 3024 iPhone photo becomes a 3024 × 3024 circle. Sides over 10,000 px are scaled down first.
For an exact size (512 × 512 for a sticker, 400 × 400 for X, 128 × 128 for an emoji), crop here, then set the width on the Resize image page; PNG is lossless, so nothing degrades, which is also why the quality slider is grayed out. The canvas anti-aliases the edge, so it stays smooth rather than stair-stepped, and EXIF (camera model, GPS, timestamp) is dropped.
Logos, wide photos and dark backgrounds
- A logo on white stays white inside the circle; only the corners go transparent. Run Remove background first if the mark has to float on a dark banner.
- On a 16:9 photo the circle can be no wider than the image is tall; slide it sideways onto the subject.
- A face filling about two thirds of the circle still reads at the 32 px chat apps use in member lists.
- A large transparent PNG can outweigh the JPG it came from: a 3000 × 3000 photo circle is often 10 MB or more. Crop tighter, or resize down.
Frequently asked questions
Are the corners actually transparent, or just white?
Transparent, as long as the output is PNG or WebP, which carry an alpha channel. If you see white around the circle later, something after the download converted the file to JPG (some email clients and CMS uploaders do); the PNG from this page has no white in it.
Why did I get a PNG when I clicked JPG?
Because a JPG cannot hold transparent pixels. With the circle active the tool ignores the JPG choice and writes a PNG. If you really want a square JPG, switch the Crop ratio to 1:1 or use the Crop image page.
Can I get the circle at a specific size, like 512 × 512?
Not on this page; the output matches the circle you drew. Crop, then set a width of 512 on the Resize image page. PNG is lossless, so nothing is degraded and the transparent corners survive.
Does the circle cropper work on a phone?
Yes. Tap Crop on the card, drag the middle of the circle to move it and the handles to resize it with a finger, then Generate. The PNG saves like any other download.
Can I make an oval or a rounded square instead?
No. The Circle option locks a 1:1 circle. For a rounded square, crop a 1:1 square on the Crop image page and let the site or slide round the corners; ovals are not offered.
Does the white background inside my logo disappear too?
No. Only the area outside the circle becomes transparent; everything inside, including a white backdrop, is kept. Use Remove background first if the logo itself has to float.
Can I circle-crop a HEIC photo straight from an iPhone?
Yes. A decoder of about 1 MB loads the first time, the photo itself stays on your phone, and the result is a standard PNG that any app opens.
Is my headshot uploaded to cut the circle?
No. The image is decoded, clipped and re-encoded on a canvas inside your browser; there is no server copy to delete afterward, and EXIF is stripped from the PNG.