How to Take a Passport Photo at Home (Sizes for Every Country, 2026)

Yes, a phone photo can be a legal passport photo

Passport offices don’t require a professional photographer — they require a photo that meets a precise specification: exact print size, plain background, your head at a defined height, your eyes on a defined line, even lighting, neutral expression. A pharmacy booth charges $15-20 to meet that spec with fluorescent lighting and one attempt. Your phone camera is dramatically better than a booth camera; the spec is the only hard part, and the spec is automatable.

Here’s the whole process, and the rules that actually get photos rejected.

Official passport photo sizes by country

Every country publishes exact geometry. The ones that cover most applications:

• United States: 2×2 inches (600×600 px at 300 DPI). Head height 1”–1⅜” from chin to crown; eye line 1⅛”–1⅜” from the bottom.
• EU / Schengen area: 35×45 mm. Face takes 70-80% of the frame height.
• United Kingdom: 35×45 mm, same geometry family as Schengen.
• India: 2×2 inches for passports and OCI applications.
• China: 33×48 mm, with tighter head-size tolerances than most.
• Canada: 50×70 mm — noticeably larger than everyone else; don’t reuse a US 2×2 here.

Two universal geometry rules hide inside all of those: the head occupies roughly half to two-thirds of the frame height, and the eyes sit a bit above the vertical center. Get those wrong and the photo is rejected regardless of how good it looks.

Taking the shot: what actually matters

Light: stand facing a window in daytime, or between two lamps. The failure mode is shadows — on your face or on the wall behind you. Overhead-only light carves eye shadows; single-side light splits your face into bright and dark halves. Even, frontal, diffuse.

Distance: have someone shoot from 1-1.5 meters away (or use the rear camera on a timer). Selfie-arm distance distorts facial proportions — noses grow, ears vanish — and examiners know the look.

Pose: face the camera square-on, both ears visible if possible, chin level. Neutral expression, mouth closed, eyes open. No glasses for US applications (since 2016); most other countries allow them only without glare. No hats except documented religious headwear that leaves the face fully visible.

Background: don’t stress about finding a perfect white wall — background replacement is the one part that’s genuinely easier in software. Any reasonably plain area behind you is enough for the AI to cut cleanly.

Recency: taken within the last 6 months, and looking like you currently look. This is checked.

Turning the shot into a compliant photo

This is where the spec work happens, and where doing it by hand in a photo editor goes wrong — eyeballing “head height 1 to 1⅜ inches” in a crop tool is exactly how DIY photos get rejected.

The passport photo maker automates the spec: it detects your face and eye line, removes the background and replaces it with a compliant plain backdrop (white for most countries, with off-white, light gray, and light blue options for the standards that want them), frames the crop so head height and eye position land inside the official geometry, and outputs the file at the exact print dimensions at 300 DPI. Presets cover the US, EU/Schengen, UK, India, China, and Canada; the visa photo variant covers visa applications, which use the same geometry families.

For babies and toddlers — the hardest passport photos in existence — lay the child on a plain light blanket, shoot from directly above with eyes open, take many frames, and pick the calmest one. The baby passport photo guide walks through the relaxed infant rules; authorities accept open mouths and non-neutral expressions for children under one.

Printing it (or not)

Digital submission: most online renewal and visa portals accept the file directly. The output is already the exact pixel dimensions the portals validate against.

Printing at home: print at 100% scale (no “fit to page”) on photo paper. A 2×2” photo at 300 DPI prints true-size by definition.

Printing at a pharmacy: the counter-intuitive money move — order your compliant file as a standard 4×6” photo print (about $0.35) instead of asking for “passport photos” (about $17 for the same physical print). Tile two copies on the 4×6 and cut along the edges. The 2×2 photo maker outputs both the single photo and the geometry to do this.

The rejection checklist

Before you submit, the five things examiners actually bounce photos for:

1. Shadows — on the face or the background. The #1 rejection cause.
2. Wrong head size — too zoomed in or out; this is why automated framing beats eyeballing.
3. Expression — visible teeth, raised eyebrows, squint. Aim for “calm mugshot.”
4. Glasses glare or tinted lenses — when glasses are allowed at all.
5. Over-editing — background replacement and exposure correction are fine; skin smoothing, teeth whitening, and beauty filters are grounds for rejection. The photo must look like a photo of you.

Meet the geometry, keep the lighting flat, and don’t beautify — that’s the entire secret. Ten minutes with a phone and the right framing beats the pharmacy booth on both quality and price.