Profile picture maker
Cropped in your browser · your image is never uploaded
Almost every platform wants a square upload and then masks it to a circle. Upload at 800 × 800 and it works everywhere, that is the largest of the common requirements, and downscaling is free.
How to use the profile picture maker
The single rule that matters is that the corners are always lost. A square photo displayed as a circle loses about 21 percent of its area, and everything in it, so a logo that fills the square gets its edges clipped and a head positioned near a corner gets cropped. Compose inside the circle. The second rule is to upload larger than you need: platforms downscale well and upscale badly, and the same file at 800 × 800 covers Instagram at 320 and YouTube at 800 without a second export. GitHub is the odd one out: it shows avatars as a rounded square rather than a circle, so slightly more of the corners survives there.
Questions
800 × 800 covers every common platform. They all downscale it themselves.
Because the square is masked to a circle, which loses about 21 percent of the area. Compose inside the circle.
Nearly all do. GitHub uses a rounded square, so a little more of the corners survives.
JPEG for a photograph, PNG for a logo or flat colour. Transparency is filled with white either way.
Usually it was uploaded smaller than the display size and got upscaled. Start at 800 square.