Guide
Round avatars that do not look jagged
Why most circle crops look cheap, and the two settings that fix it.
A circular crop is easy; a circular crop that looks clean is not. Three things decide the result.
1. Crop tight, then crop again
Faces should fill roughly 60–70% of the circle. A head floating in a large empty circle reads as a mistake. Our Circle crop takes the centre square first — if the subject is off-centre, pre-crop with the Crop tool using the anchor controls, then round it.
2. Output at 2× the display size
A 40 px avatar on a retina screen needs 80 px of real data, and on a profile header it may render at 200 px. Produce 512 px and let the browser downscale — that is what keeps the edge smooth.
3. Match the background, or go transparent
Transparent PNG works when you control the container. When the avatar is used somewhere you do not control — a forum, a marketplace listing, an email client — a solid background matching the surface colour avoids a white box appearing out of nowhere.
Why PNG and not JPG here
The circle edge is exactly the kind of sharp transition JPG handles worst: it produces ringing and a visible halo around the arc. PNG keeps it clean, and a 512 px avatar is only tens of kilobytes anyway.
Ready to try it? Open the tool.