Passport photos · 10 min read

Written by the photoedit.in editorial team · Updated 2026-02-18 · Reviewed for accuracy against current tool behaviour

Start with the official specification, not a template you found online

Passport photo rules differ by country and by document type. A photograph that is perfect for an Indian passport application may be rejected for a US visa, and a photo accepted last year may fail this year if the specification has been updated. Before you take a single picture, find the current requirement on the official website of the authority that will process your application. Write down four numbers: the required print size in millimetres, the required head height, the permitted background colour and the permitted expression. Those four details decide almost everything about how you shoot and crop the photo. Templates and presets are useful shortcuts, but they are only as good as the specification they were built from, so treat the official page as the source of truth and the preset as a convenience.

Understand the head-size rule

The single most common reason a home-made passport photo is rejected is that the head is the wrong size within the frame. Authorities usually specify a head height as a proportion of the total image height, measured from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head, excluding hair volume. If the head is too small the face is hard to recognise; if it is too large the crop feels cramped and the top of the head may be cut off. This is why you should crop to the head-size rule rather than simply centring the face and filling the frame. A preset that shows an alignment guide is genuinely helpful here, because it lets you line up the chin and the crown visually instead of guessing at percentages. If your tool has no guide, measure the head in pixels in the exported file and compare it with the required proportion before you print.

Set up lighting that avoids shadows

Passport photography is unforgiving about lighting because the requirements usually forbid shadows on the face and on the background. The simplest reliable setup is a plain wall and soft, even daylight from a window, with the person facing the window rather than standing beside it. Avoid direct sun, which creates hard shadows under the nose and chin, and avoid a single ceiling light directly overhead, which produces dark eye sockets. If you are shooting in the evening, two lamps placed at roughly 45 degrees to either side of the subject, at the same height and distance, will give flatter and more even light than one lamp. Keep the subject at least half a metre away from the wall so that their own shadow does not fall on the background. Then check the result on the phone screen before you commit: if you can see a shadow behind an ear or under the chin, move the light or the person and try again.

Get the pose and expression right

The rules are usually strict and specific: face the camera squarely, keep both eyes open and visible, keep the mouth closed, and hold a neutral expression. Glasses are often permitted only if there is no glare and the frames do not cover the eyes, and many authorities now prefer no glasses at all. Hair should be pulled back so that it does not cover the eyebrows, ears or the outline of the face. Head coverings are generally allowed only for religious reasons, and even then the face must be fully visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead. Ask the person to relax their shoulders, look straight into the lens rather than at the screen, and keep their chin level. A common mistake is a slight upward tilt, which makes the nostrils more prominent and shortens the neck; a slight downward tilt hides the ears. Take several frames and choose the one where the head is level.

Choose and prepare the background

Most specifications call for a plain white or off-white background, and some allow light grey or a specific blue. The background must be uniform, with no visible texture, objects, door frames or shadows. A smooth painted wall works better than a fabric sheet, which shows creases. If your only option is a wall that is not quite white, you can correct the background after the fact, but be careful: replacing a background convincingly around hair requires care, and a hard cut-out with a visible halo will be rejected. A safer approach is to brighten and neutralise the existing background slightly rather than replacing it entirely. If you do replace it, zoom in on the hairline and the shoulders at 100 percent and check that the edge looks natural, with no grey fringe or leftover colour from the original wall.

Crop, resize and check the print size

Once you have a good frame, crop to the required aspect ratio and resize to the pixel dimensions that correspond to the required print size at a sensible resolution. For print work, 300 pixels per inch is the usual target, which means a 35 by 45 millimetre photo needs roughly 413 by 531 pixels, and a 2 by 2 inch photo needs about 600 by 600 pixels. Exporting at a much lower resolution will look soft when printed; exporting at a much higher resolution does not add detail and only makes the file larger. After exporting, open the file and check the head height, the background uniformity and the sharpness of the eyes. If the photo will be submitted digitally, also check the file format and maximum file size the portal accepts, because some systems reject files above a surprisingly small limit.

Print carefully, or use a print sheet

If you need a physical copy, printing a single small photo at home is wasteful and hard to align. A better approach is to place several copies of the same photo on a single sheet at the correct physical size, print on photo paper at the highest quality setting, and cut along the guides. Check that your printer is not applying automatic scaling, which is a common cause of photos that are a millimetre or two off. Matte photo paper is usually a safer choice than glossy, because glossy prints can produce reflections that interfere with scanning. If you are submitting the photo digitally and also need a print, keep both exports from the same source file so that the face, crop and background are identical across both versions.

A final checklist before you submit

Run through the requirements one more time against the finished file. Is the head the right height? Is the background plain and the correct colour? Are both eyes visible, open and free of glare? Is the mouth closed and the expression neutral? Is the image sharp, correctly exposed and free of shadows on the face? Is the file the right dimensions, format and size for the portal? Does the photo look like the person today, rather than a picture from several years ago? If any answer is uncertain, fix it now. Resubmitting an application because of a photograph costs far more time than taking ten more frames and choosing a better one.

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How to Make a Passport Photo at Home That Actually Gets Accepted