Crop Image to Circle
Crop image to circle: drag the round frame over the face or logo, press Apply, and download a PNG whose corners are truly empty, so it sits on any background.
Drop an image to crop it into a circle
The circle opens on your picture. Apply, then download a round PNG with see-through corners. Or press Ctrl + V to paste one straight from your clipboard. PNG, JPG or WebP, up to 25 MB. Edited in your browser, never uploaded.
A circle cropper
that leaves the corners empty.
A round picture is a polite fiction. Every image file is a rectangle, and the circle is a square whose four corners hold nothing at all. Get that nothing right and the picture sits on any background; get it wrong and a white box follows your face into every dark-mode app.
Other crop shapes and sizes
The same crop tool, opened on a different shape or size. Each one starts with its frame already set.
Tools that pair well with this one
All free, all in your browser, no signup.
Why use Piknova?
A real circle beats a round preview.
What changes when the circle is cut into the file instead of only drawn on the screen.
Piknova
What you get- Transparent corners saved in the file itself
- PNG by default, with a warning before JPG turns the corners white
- Runs in your browser, the photo stays on your device
- No signup, full resolution download
- A frame that stays perfectly round while you resize it
Other tools
What you put up with- A round preview that downloads as a square
- White corners you only notice on a dark background
- Sent to a server, cut there, sent back
- An account wall at the download button
- A free ellipse that squashes into an oval at the first drag
Drop, drag the circle, download a PNG
Three steps in this browser tab, no account, 25 MB per image.
- 01
Drop the picture
Drag a JPG, PNG or WebP onto the box. A circle opens over it, centred and as large as the picture can hold.
- 02
Put the circle on the face
Drag the middle to move it, a handle to shrink it. It stays a perfect circle the whole time.
- 03
Apply, then download
Press Apply and the corners turn transparent. The export is already on PNG, so the download keeps them that way.
Step by step
Crop image to circle in five steps
One drop, one drag, one press of Apply. Here is each step, with the part most tools skip.
- Drop the picture: Drag a JPG, PNG or WebP onto the box at the top of this page, or paste one with Ctrl+V. The circle opens in the middle, as big as the shorter side allows.
- Move the circle: Grab the middle and drag it over the face, the logo or whatever should survive. Everything outside the ring is dimmed so you can see what goes.
- Size it: Drag a handle to shrink it, or type one number into W or H. A circle has one size, so the other field follows, and it stops at the largest circle the picture holds.
- Apply the cut: Press Apply. The page trims to the circle's square and the four corners become transparent, not white.
- Download the PNG: Open the export menu. It is already on PNG, which keeps the corners clear; WebP does too, usually in a smaller file.
Changed your mind before Apply? Press Square in the toolbar's Crop shape group and the circle becomes a square frame in exactly the same spot.
4
corners made see-through
Why corners go white
Make image circular without white corners
There is no such thing as a round image file. There is a square with an invisible part, and the format decides whether the invisible part survives.
Each pixel in a PNG or WebP can carry a fourth number next to red, green and blue: how opaque it is. That extra number is the alpha channel, and a circle crop sets it to zero in the four corners so whatever sits behind the picture shows through.
JPG has no alpha channel. It has to put a colour in every pixel, so the corners get filled with white. That is why the editor stops you with a warning if you switch the export to JPG on this page.
| Format | Corners | Pick it when |
|---|---|---|
| PNG | Transparent | You want the safe choice. Every app and site that takes images reads it |
| WebP | Transparent | The circle goes on a web page and a smaller file matters |
| JPG | White | The circle only ever sits on a white page, and the site refuses PNG |
One trap looks like a bug and is not. Some image viewers draw see-through pixels as white or as a grey checkerboard, so a perfect PNG can look like it has corners. Drop it onto a dark slide or a dark-mode chat to see the truth.
Profile pictures
Crop photo into circle for a profile picture
The most common reason anyone wants a round photo is a small round slot next to their name. Oddly, that slot often wants a square.
A profile picture is an avatar, the small image that stands for you in a comment thread, a chat list or a login screen. Most social apps draw that circle themselves: they take the square you upload and mask the corners on screen.
So check where the picture is going before you cut. If the site already shows avatars as circles, send it a square with your face in the middle and let it do the rounding. A pre-cut circle there gains nothing, and some sites fill the transparent corners with a colour you did not choose.
- Cut the circle yourself for: email signatures, slide decks, documents, stickers, a team page built without rounded image styles, and anything printed.
- Send a square instead for: social profiles and chat apps that already round your picture on screen.
- Either way: leave a little room above the head. The circle clips the corners of the square, which is exactly where hair and ears live.
For web pages
Circle crop image online, or round it with CSS?
If the circle is going on a page you build, you have a second option that does not touch the file at all.
On a web page, one line of CSS rounds a square image as it is drawn: border-radius set to 50%, or a clip-path circle. The file stays a plain square with every pixel intact, so the same image can appear round in one place and square in another.
| Cut the circle here | Round it with CSS | |
|---|---|---|
| The file | A square PNG or WebP with transparent corners | A plain square, unchanged |
| Works in | Anything that shows images: slides, documents, email, chat, print | Web pages whose styles you control |
| Change your mind later | Crop the original again | Delete one line of CSS |
The rule of thumb: if you can write the style, use CSS and keep the square. If the picture leaves your code and lands in someone else's app, cut the circle into the file here.
Further reading
What a circle costs
How much a round image cropper keeps
A circle drawn inside a square covers a quarter of pi of it, about 78.5%. The rest of your photo pays for the shape.
The circle can only be as wide as the photo's shorter side, so a sideways photo loses its left and right ends before the corners even come into it. The table shows what the opening circle keeps of five pictures people drop here most, worked out with the editor's own fitting code.
| Picture | Size | Largest circle | Share kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone photo, upright | 3024 x 4032 | 3024 px across | 58.9% |
| Phone photo, sideways | 4032 x 3024 | 3024 px across | 58.9% |
| Camera photo, upright | 4000 x 6000 | 4000 px across | 52.4% |
| Camera photo, sideways | 6000 x 4000 | 4000 px across | 52.4% |
| Full HD screenshot | 1920 x 1080 | 1080 px across | 44.2% |
A single face survives that easily. A group photo does not: the people at either end are the first to go. For a group, crop a square instead and let the corners stay.
Circle crop: common questions
What people ask when a rectangular photo has to become a round one.
Open this page in your phone's browser and tap the box to pick a photo. Slide the circle into place with a finger, tap Apply, then download.
On an iPhone the file lands in the Files app, and you can share it to Photos from there. Nothing to install either way.
Most often the export was switched to JPG, which cannot store transparency and fills the corners white. Download it again as PNG or WebP.
If it is already a PNG, the app you opened it in may be drawing transparency as white. Put it on a dark background to check.
No. The frame is always a perfect circle, and if a frame is off square when you switch to Circle, it becomes its centred square first.
A circle only ever keeps a square's worth of the picture, so for a wide subject crop a wider rectangle with the crop image tool instead.
Neither, today. The edge is a clean cut and the corners are simply empty.
On a web page a CSS border draws a ring around a round image without touching the file. In a slide or document, most editors can add an outline to a picture.
Bigger than it looks. The same avatar shown at 40 pixels in a comment may be shown ten times larger on your profile page, and doubled again on a sharp screen.
Crop the largest circle the face allows and let the site shrink it. A site can scale a picture down cleanly, but it cannot invent detail that was never there.
Before Apply, press Square in the Crop shape group and the frame becomes a square in the same place.
After Apply, Ctrl+Z steps back to before the cut. Open the crop again later and it comes back as a circle, so you can adjust it instead of starting over.
Round, clear, done.
Drop the photo, set the circle on the face, and download a round PNG with transparent corners. Free, with no signup.