How to Crop an Image Into a Circle With a Transparent Background
Crop any picture into a circle with clear corners: square it first, centre the face, round it and save as PNG or WebP, not JPG. Plus borders and profile sizes.
Updated September 15, 20265 min read
To crop an image into a circle, crop it to a square first, then apply a circular mask and save it as PNG or WebP so the four corners stay transparent. Skip the square and you get an oval or a pill; save as JPG and the corners come back filled with a solid colour. Both mistakes are easy to avoid once you know why they happen.
Why the square comes first
A circle is what a rounded rectangle becomes when the sides are equal and the corner radius reaches half of a side. Our round corners tool measures its radius against the image's shorter edge, so the Circle preset — a 50% radius — turns a square into a true circle, and turns a 3:2 photo into a pill: round at the ends, straight along the top and bottom. The tool is doing exactly what it should; the input was not square.
So crop first. In the crop tool, choose the 1:1 (Square) ratio and the box stays square however you drag it. The crop tool saves a PNG, so nothing is lost between the two steps. The general principles of framing a crop are in cropping an image to an aspect ratio.
Centre the face, then leave room
A circle drawn inside a square removes the four corners — a little over a fifth of the area. Anything that sat in a corner is gone, and anything near the edge ends up pressed against the rim.
- Put the eyes slightly above the centre line. In a head-and-shoulders crop that places the face in the middle of the circle and lets the shoulders fill the lower curve.
- Leave space above the head. A crown touching the rim looks cramped at thumbnail size.
- Crop a little looser than feels natural. Avatars are shown small; a face filling the circle edge to edge reads as a close-up, while one with some space around it reads as a portrait.
- Check the corners of the square. A hand, a logo or a second person in a corner will be cut in half.
The crop tool's rule-of-thirds overlay helps with placement. Its automatic centre-on-the-face crop is a Pro feature; on the free tier you position the box yourself, which for a single portrait takes seconds.
PNG or WebP, never JPG
A circular image is still a square file. The four corner regions are simply marked transparent, so whatever sits behind the image shows through them. Only formats with transparency support can store that.
| Format | Corners | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| PNG | Transparent | The safe default — widely accepted and lossless |
| WebP | Transparent | Websites, where the smaller file matters |
| JPG | Filled with a solid colour | Only when you want a coloured square behind the circle |
The round corners tool starts on PNG with a transparent background, and warns you if you switch to JPG while the background is still transparent. If you genuinely want the corners filled — a circle on a brand-coloured square, say — set the background to Solid and pick the colour; then JPG is fine. More on choosing between them in PNG vs JPG vs WebP.
Step by step
Optional: remove the background
For a cut-out portrait or product, run the image through the background remover first and keep PNG output, so the circle frames the subject on transparency. Removing a background cleanly covers the details.
Crop to a square
Use the 1:1 ratio in the crop tool, framed as described above.
Apply the Circle preset
In the round corners tool, choose Circle. The preview sits on a chequerboard, so you can see the corners are genuinely clear rather than white.
Add a ring if you want one
Turn on the border, set the width and colour, and choose whether it sits inside, centred on or outside the edge. An outside ring needs room: raise the margin, which enlarges the canvas, and the tool tells you if the ring would be cut off.
Export as PNG
Or WebP for a website. On the free tier WebP and JPG export at 92% quality and Pro goes to 100%; PNG is lossless on both.
Square image in, transparent circle out, with an optional ring. It all runs on your device, not our servers.
Make it a circleProfile pictures: upload the square or the circle?
Where a platform draws the circle for you, upload the square. Its own mask hides the corners anyway, and a square gives its crop preview something to work with; a pre-cut circle gains nothing there. A ready-made circle earns its place where nothing masks for you: a team page on a website, an email signature, a slide, a sticker, a printed document.
Either way, upload more pixels than the platform displays. At the time of writing, X recommends 400 × 400 pixels for a profile photo, with a 2MB limit, and LinkedIn recommends 400 × 400 for a Page logo, up to 3MB as PNG or JPEG. Note that last detail: a WebP would not be accepted there, which is one more reason PNG is the default.
The social media image resizer has square profile presets for several platforms. It fills empty space with a background colour rather than transparency, so use it to size the square first, then round the result. Sizes for every other slot are in social media image sizes.
Rounding a whole team's photos
For a team page the goal is consistency: the same diameter, the same ring and the same space around every face. The round corners tool takes one image at a time on the free tier; Pro takes up to 100 in one pass with the same settings. Either way, crop each person to a square by hand first — the rounding step is uniform, but the framing of each face is not, and it is the framing people notice when a row of avatars sits side by side.
Frequently asked questions
How do I crop a picture into a circle?
Crop it to a square, apply a circular mask with a 50% corner radius, and save it as PNG. The round corners tool's Circle preset does the masking in one click.
Why is my circle crop an oval?
Because the image was not square. A 50% radius on a rectangle gives an oval or a pill, depending on the tool. Crop to 1:1 first and the same setting gives a true circle.
How do I make a circle image with a transparent background?
Keep the background set to transparent and export as PNG or WebP. JPG has no transparency, so it fills the corners with a solid colour.
Why does my round picture have white corners?
Either it was saved as JPG or with a solid background, or the app showing it displays transparency as white. Place it on a dark background: if the corners vanish, they are transparent.
What size should a round profile picture be?
Upload a square comfortably above the display size — X, for example, recommends 400 × 400 pixels. The platform scales it down; it cannot add detail that is not there.
Can I add a border to a circle image?
Yes. Turn on the border in the round corners tool and it follows the circle. Set the width and colour, and raise the margin if the ring sits outside the edge.