Can you make a photo circular instead of rectangular?
Asked 2/8/2016
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I need a photo to appear as a circle for a composition. In Darktable, the crop tool only seems to support rectangular crops, and I couldn’t find a way to make the area outside the circle transparent. Is it possible to create a non-rectangular image shape, or do I need to keep a rectangular canvas and use transparency instead? If Darktable can’t do this, what free Linux-compatible software can?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
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Every image format (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc.) that I know of can only represent rectangular images. This means that unless you define your own image format, this simply cannot be done.
The only thing you can do is to work with transparency. Even though the image itself will still be rectangular, if only a circular portion of it is opaque, it will look like a circular image when displayed on a website, for instance.
I do not think that Darktable can do this. However, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) can. You can use selections and layer masks to control the alpha channel (transparency) of your image. There are various tutorials about this on the internet (e.g. https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Layer_Masks/). When saving your image, you have to make sure to select an image format that supports transparency. For instance, PNG and TIFF do, while JPEG does not.
Originally by user47528. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user47528
10y ago
0
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Image files are still fundamentally rectangular. To make a photo appear circular, you normally keep the rectangular canvas and make everything outside the circle transparent.
Darktable does not appear to support this directly. A free Linux-friendly option that can do it is GIMP: create a circular selection, then use a layer mask or alpha channel to hide everything outside the circle. When exporting, save to a format that supports transparency, such as PNG or TIFF; JPEG will not preserve transparent areas.
So the practical answer is: you usually can’t create a truly non-rectangular image file, but you can create the same visual result by using transparency around the circular part of the photo.
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