Passport Photo Guide

Official photo sizes country by country, how to shoot one with a phone, which background each country wants, why photos get rejected, and how to print a sheet at home.

• Passport photo size by countryOfficial passport and visa photo dimensions for 12 countries plus the ICAO template: frame size in millimetres, required head height, and background colour.
• How to take a passport photo with your phoneDistance, lens choice, lighting and background for a phone passport photo that survives measurement — and the mistakes that quietly ruin the shot.
• Passport photo background rulesWhich background colour each country actually requires, why shadow fails more often than colour, and the one country that rejects software-replaced backgrounds.
• Why passport photos get rejectedThe measurable reasons a passport photo fails — head size, eye line, expression, blur, exposure, background — and the thresholds a checker uses.
• How to print passport photos at homeLay out passport photos on a 10 × 15 cm print sheet or A4, keep 300 DPI, and cut them accurately — without paying a studio.
• Glasses, smiling and head coveringsWhat you can and cannot wear or do in a passport photo: glasses, expression, religious head coverings, hair, and how each affects the measurement.
• Visa photo vs passport photoUS 2 × 2 inch, Schengen 35 × 45 mm, Chinese visa 33 × 48 mm — when a visa photo differs from a passport photo and which spec to choose.
• Head height and eye line explainedWhat chin-to-crown height, the 70–80 per cent rule, the eye line from the bottom edge and the margin above the head actually mean — and how they are measured.