BuddyPress.org

Not everyone has Photoshop, or even knows how to crop images down to exact sizes. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true. min-width type CSS isn’t supported in IE. Plus being able to adjust and crop your avatar yourself instead of trusting an auto-script to get your face just right where you want it makes more sense.

But, if you wanted to ditch the avatar cropper and replace it with simpler automated libraries, that’s very possible to do also by unhooking and not using the existing functions, and replacing them with your own custom ones.