How to Cut an Image in a Circle in Paint?

Unfortunately, directly cutting an image into a circle isn't a built-in feature of the standard Paint application that comes with Windows. Paint (the classic version) lacks the advanced image editing capabilities, like non-rectangular cropping, that would allow you to precisely crop to a circle.

However, what the reference does suggest is that modern versions of Microsoft Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel do have this feature when working with images inserted into those documents:

Cropping to a Circle in Microsoft Office Applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)

Here's how you can achieve the effect of cutting an image into a circle using Microsoft Office applications:

1. Insert the image: Open Word, PowerPoint, or Excel and insert the image you want to crop.
2. Select the image: Click on the image to select it. This will reveal the Picture Tools Format tab.
3. Access the Crop Tool: Go to the Picture Tools Format tab and find the Crop option.
4. Crop to Shape: Click the dropdown arrow under Crop and choose Crop to Shape.
5. Select Oval Shape: From the shapes gallery, select the Oval shape (which will form the basis for your circle).
6. Adjust Aspect Ratio (Optional): The oval might appear as an ellipse initially. To make it a perfect circle, while the image is still selected and in crop mode, use the Aspect Ratio options in the crop tool. Select 1:1 to force a perfect circle crop.
7. Position and Resize: Adjust the cropped area by dragging the handles to center the circle over the desired part of the image and resize as needed.
8. Finalize the Crop: Click outside of the image or press Enter to finalize the circular crop.

Important Considerations:

• Background: After cropping in an Office application, if you copy and paste the image to another program, the background will remain white (or the document's background color). To make the background transparent, you'd need a more advanced image editor.
• Paint 3D: Although standard Paint has limited cropping functionality, Paint 3D (another Microsoft app) has more robust selection tools that could potentially be used, albeit less precisely, to achieve a similar effect. Consider exploring Paint 3D if you need a free option.

In conclusion, while original Paint does not directly offer circular cropping, using the cropping feature in Microsoft Office apps is the closest workaround mentioned in the provided reference.