Circle Crop: Cut a Picture into a Circle

How do I crop an image into a circle?

Choose a picture and the Crop tool opens with the Circle shape on. Drag the circle onto the part you want, pull a corner handle to make it larger or smaller, then press Apply crop and Save picture. The result is a round PNG with a see-through background.

1. Press Choose a picture, drop a file, paste with Ctrl+V, or press Take a photo on a phone.
2. The crop box shows as a circle. Drag it to center it on a face or an object, and use the corner handles to resize it. The circle stays a perfect circle.
3. Press Apply crop. The corners outside the circle become see-through.
4. Press Save picture. The format switches to PNG so the see-through corners survive.

For a square or a rectangle crop with a ratio such as 4:5, use Crop Image. Both pages open the same editor. To cut out the person or object itself on a see-through background, use Remove Background.

What size is the circle?

The circle is as wide as the square it is cut from, so its diameter equals the shorter side of the box you place. The largest possible circle uses the shorter side of the picture. Shrinking the box makes a smaller circle and keeps more of the surroundings out of the frame.

The share is the circle's area, pi over 4 of its square, divided by the whole picture. A phone photo loses more of its sides than a square one, so move the circle to where the subject sits.

How do I get a transparent background around the circle?

Save as PNG, WebP or AVIF, which can hold see-through pixels. The editor switches to PNG on its own when you apply a circle. A JPG has no transparency, so choosing JPG fills the corners with the background color you pick in Export, white by default.

See-through corners are useful for round profile pictures, stickers and logos placed on a colored page. The Wikipedia article on PNG describes how the format stores transparency in an alpha channel.

Is the edge of the circle smooth?

Yes. Pixels on the rim are partly see-through in proportion to how much of each pixel lies inside the circle, which removes jagged steps. Pixels well inside stay fully opaque and pixels well outside are fully clear. The smoothing is part of the saved file, so it holds when the picture is scaled.

The circle is cut at full size in the export worker, so a large photo gives a large, smooth circle. To change the final size afterward, use Resize Image.

Can I round only the corners instead?

Yes. The Layout tool in the Photo Editor has a Rounded corners mode with a radius slider. A radius of 50 percent of the shorter side gives a circle on a square picture, smaller values give rounded corners, and you pick see-through corners or a fill color.

Open the Photo Editor, choose Layout and then Rounded corners. A circle crop moves the circle anywhere on the picture, while the rounded-corner mode keeps the whole picture and trims only its corners.