create a fixed height and width for profile photos Is it possible to do anything with Craft's getPhotoUrl() function to allow images to be processed in a similar way like assets?

For example for our profile photos I'd like them to be returned 45x45 cropped from centre. 

Currently if a user were to upload a landscape photo they would see something like 45x25 because the height isn't being maintained.  

Thoughts?
Kind of.  They currently aren't technically true "Assets" like in the rest of Craft.

The most you can do is pass in a size to the method getPhotoUrl(45) and you'll get a 45 x 45 square result back.  I believe it will crop from the center only.

We have plans for Craft 3 so they'll be treated like 1st class Assets and you'll be able to perform transforms on them like any other Asset.