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Shaping
Circle crop an image
Cuts a circle out of the middle of your photo and makes everything outside it genuinely transparent, which is what a profile picture needs if it is going to sit on any background.
Preview
It has to be a PNG
JPEG cannot store transparency. If a circular crop is saved as JPEG the corners come back as white or black squares, which is why so many round avatars end up with a pale box around them on a dark page. This tool always writes PNG for that reason.
The circle is taken from the centre. Zoom in if your subject is small in the frame, or crop the photo square first with the crop tool if the framing needs more care than a centre circle allows.
Common questions
Why is my file bigger than the original?
Because PNG is lossless and your input was probably JPEG. That is the price of transparency. For an avatar at 400 pixels the file is small in absolute terms anyway.
Do I need this if the site already shows round avatars?
Usually not; most platforms mask it for you. It matters when you need the round image itself, for a slide, a signature block or a printed document.
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