Processed locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Circle Crop Tool
Quick answer
Crop a square 1:1 region and mask it into a circle for an avatar, with a transparent PNG so the corners around the circle do not show up as a solid block of colour.
What the circle crop tool does
The selection is locked to a square, since a circle only reads correctly when cut from an equal width and height. You drag and zoom the square over the part of the photo you want inside the circle — centring a face usually means leaving headroom above the hair and stopping just below the collarbone, so the crop does not clip the chin.
The mask itself just hides the four corners of that square; it does not touch the pixels inside. What matters is the export format: the corners have to become transparent rather than white or black, and only a format with an alpha channel can store that, which is why this tool always exports PNG rather than offering JPEG here.
It is built for the places a circular photo actually gets used — a Discord or Slack profile picture, a forum avatar, a team headshot on an "about us" page a designer has already built with circular frames in the layout.
How to use it
Upload the photo
Choose a source image with the face or subject roughly centred already.
Position the square selection
Drag and zoom until the part you want sits inside the circular guide.
Check the circular preview
Confirm nothing important — like the top of the head — is being cut off by the mask.
Export as PNG
Download the file; the area outside the circle is saved as transparent, not white or black.
Your images never leave your device
This runs the same as every Pixora tool: in the browser tab, nothing sent out. Worth spelling out here, because avatar photos are personal in a way other images are not — a candidate cropping a headshot before a job offer is confirmed, or someone setting up a private Discord server who would rather their photo skip a third-party resizing service.
- No file is ever uploaded to a server
- Works offline after the first visit
- No account, no watermark, no limits
Format and quality tips
Why the output must be PNG, not JPEG
JPEG has no alpha channel — every pixel in a JPEG file must have some colour, full stop. Export a circle crop as JPEG and the four corners that should be invisible get filled in as solid white or black instead, so what looked like a clean circle on screen shows up on Discord or Slack as a circle sitting inside a visible square. PNG can mark those corners fully transparent, which is the only way the circular mask blends cleanly.
Leave margin around the face
Circular crops lose more of the frame than a square crop the same size, since the corners are cut regardless. Zoom out slightly further than feels natural so the mask does not shave off the top of the hair or the point of the chin.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my circle avatar have a white background instead of transparent?
It was exported as JPEG at some point. JPEG cannot store transparency, so the corners get filled with a solid colour. Export as PNG instead and the corners stay see-through.
What size should a circle-cropped avatar be?
Most chat apps display avatars between 128 and 512 pixels square. Exporting at 512×512 gives a sharp circle on both a small mobile avatar and a larger profile view.
Can I circle-crop a rectangular photo directly?
The selection is fixed to a square first, so a rectangular photo is zoomed and positioned within a square before the circular mask goes on top of it.
Does the circle crop remove the background automatically?
No. It only masks the corners outside the circle to transparent. Anything inside the circular area, including a busy background behind the subject, stays exactly as photographed.
Why does part of my head get cut off in the preview?
The circular guide crops closer to the edges than the square selection suggests. Zoom out a little further so there is margin above the hairline and below the chin before exporting.
Can I use circle-crop output as a JPEG for a smaller file size?
You can convert it afterward, but that throws away the transparency and fills the corners with a solid colour, defeating the point of the circular export.
Further reading
- Social Media Image Sizes: The Cheat SheetThe sizes you actually need, in one table, and the reason a correctly-sized image beats a giant original: every platform re-encodes what you upload, so the pixels you send are never the pixels people see.6 min read
- Passport Photo Size GuideThe official sizes for US, UK, EU, India, China, Canada, Australia and Japan photos, converted to pixels at 300 DPI with the arithmetic shown — and a clear line on what a resizing tool can and cannot verify.6 min read
- How to Crop Images Without Losing QualityCropping does not blur anything — it just removes pixels at the edges. What actually costs you quality is re-encoding a JPEG and enlarging the crop afterwards. Here is how to avoid both.6 min read