Passport photo maker

1. Upload a portrait photo. Drag a JPG, PNG, or WebP onto the box above or click to browse. A recent, front-facing photo against a plain, light background gives the best result — more on that below.
2. Pick your country's size. Choose a preset from the dropdown — United States 2×2 in, Schengen/EU, UK, India, or Pakistan 35×45 mm, Canada 50×70 mm, China 33×48 mm, the US Green Card / DV Lottery digital format, or a generic square. The crop box locks to that preset's official aspect ratio, so whatever you frame is guaranteed to come out at the right proportions.
3. Frame the head. Drag and resize the crop box, and use the rotate and zoom buttons to straighten the shot. Aim for the head filling roughly 70–80% of the frame height with a little space above the hair.
4. Download. The finished JPG preview updates live as you adjust — with the exact pixel dimensions, the file size, and a 300 DPI badge. Download the single photo for online applications, or the 4×6 in print sheet to have physical copies printed for pocket change.

You can switch presets at any time after uploading — the crop re-locks to the new ratio and the output re-renders instantly, so making a US 2×2 and an EU 35×45 mm version from the same photo takes seconds.

Passport photo requirements differ by country, but nearly all of them boil down to a physical print size plus composition rules. These are the presets this tool ships with, and the pixel dimensions each one produces at 300 DPI:

The pixel numbers come straight from the print math: 35 mm is 1.378 inches, and 1.378 in × 300 DPI ≈ 413 pixels. That's why a 35x45 photo at 300 DPI is 413 × 531 pixels, a US 2x2 photo is 600 × 600, and Canada's larger 50 × 70 mm frame needs 591 × 827. If a form asks for a size that isn't listed — say 40 × 50 mm — the generic square plus the image resizer will get you any custom dimension.

DPI — dots per inch — is the piece most home-made passport photos get wrong. A JPG is just a grid of pixels; the DPI value stored in its metadata tells printers and photo labs how large those pixels should be on paper. Passport authorities almost universally specify photos “printed at 300 DPI or better,” because at lower densities facial features soften and automated face-matching systems have less to work with. Two things follow from that. First, the photo needs enough pixels: 600 × 600 for a true 2 × 2 in print. Second, the file should say it's 300 DPI, so that when a lab, a pharmacy kiosk, or Word places the image, it comes out at exactly 2 inches rather than a vague “fit to page.”

This tool handles both: every export is rendered at the full target pixel count, and real 300 DPI metadata is written into the JPEG's JFIF header — the same field a photo lab reads — not just implied by the pixel count. If you only need to change the DPI tag of an existing photo without recropping it, the dedicated image DPI converter does exactly that with zero quality loss.

Being clear about scope saves you a rejected application. This tool crops and resizes your photo to official dimensions, locks the aspect ratio so the proportions can't drift, exports at exact pixel sizes with genuine 300 DPI metadata, and lays out a printable 4×6 sheet. That covers the mechanical part of the job — the part most paid passport-photo apps charge for.

What it does not do: it can't remove or replace the background, and it can't verify biometric compliance — head height, eye position, neutral expression, glare on glasses, shadows. No measurement happens here; you are the judge of the framing. So start from a photo that already has a plain white or off-white background, even lighting, and a straight-on, neutral face. If your only photo has a busy background, retake it against a blank wall — it takes two minutes and removes the most common rejection reason.

Requirements also change, and the issuing authority always has the final say. Before submitting, skim the official rules for your country — for example the US State Department photo requirements, the UK government's rules for passport photos, or Canada's passport photo specifications. Five minutes of reading beats a returned application.

Since the tool handles the sizing, the remaining risk is the photograph. The rules below are common to nearly every country's specification and cover the vast majority of rejections:

• Head size and position. The head — chin to crown — should fill roughly 70–80% of the frame height (the US specifies 1 to 1⅜ in of the 2 in frame), centered horizontally, with eyes in the upper half of the photo. The crop box makes this easy: place the chin near the lower third and leave a small margin above the hair.
• Expression and pose. Face the camera square-on with a neutral expression or a natural, closed-mouth smile. Both eyes open, nothing covering the face, and no head tilt.
• Lighting. Even, diffuse light from the front — stand facing a window. Harsh shadows on the face or the background are a classic rejection trigger.
• Background. Plain white or off-white, evenly lit, with no visible texture, patterns, or other people. A blank interior wall works; hang a white sheet if you have to.
• Glasses and headwear. The US no longer accepts glasses in passport photos; most other countries allow them only without glare or tinted lenses. Head coverings are generally accepted only for religious or medical reasons, and the full face must remain visible from chin to forehead.
• Recency. Most authorities require the photo to have been taken within the last six months and to reflect your current appearance.

Phone cameras are more than good enough. Have someone take the photo from about 1.5–2 metres away at eye level — selfies at arm's length distort facial proportions — and you'll have plenty of resolution for even the largest preset here.

The trick regular travelers know: don't pay passport-photo prices. Pharmacies, supermarkets, and photo kiosks will print a standard 4×6 inch photo for a few cents — often twenty times cheaper than the same store's passport-photo service. The “4×6 in print sheet” button tiles your finished photo across a 1800 × 1200 pixel canvas — exactly 6 × 4 inches at 300 DPI — with thin grey cut lines between copies. Order it as a plain 4×6 print, cut along the lines with scissors or a paper trimmer, and you have six US-size photos or eight 35 × 45 mm photos from a single print.

Two practical printing notes. First, order the print at “actual size” — if the kiosk offers “fill” or “fit” options, choose the one that does not scale or crop the image, otherwise the physical dimensions will drift off-spec. Second, choose glossy or matte photo paper according to your country's preference — several authorities explicitly accept either, but plain copy paper is universally rejected.

More and more applications skip paper entirely. The US Diversity Visa (Green Card) Lottery requires a square digital JPEG of exactly 600 × 600 pixels, under 240 KB — precisely what the DV Lottery preset produces. Many e-visa portals (India's e-Visa, various Schengen national portals, US online passport renewal) similarly accept an uploaded JPG at the country's standard dimensions. Use the single-photo download for these, and if a portal enforces a maximum file size, run the result through the image compressor with an exact KB target — it preserves the pixel dimensions while shrinking the file under the cap.

Children need passports too, and photographing a baby to spec is its own small adventure. The rules relax slightly — most countries accept a supported head, closed hands, and (for infants under one) even closed eyes in some jurisdictions — but the background and framing rules still apply. The reliable technique: lay the baby on a plain white blanket or sheet, shoot straight down from above in daylight, and make sure no hands (yours or theirs) are visible near the face. Then upload the photo here, pick the destination country's preset, and crop so the head sits in the upper-middle of the frame at the required proportion. Because the crop happens after the fact, you can take twenty relaxed photos and pick the one frame where the eyes are open and the head is straight — far easier than trying to pose a newborn inside a photo booth's outline.

The same take-many-crop-later approach helps anyone photographing an elderly relative, a wriggly toddler, or themselves with a phone on a timer: get the lighting and background right once, shoot freely, and let the crop box do the precision work afterwards.

• Travelers renewing by mail or online who need a compliant photo without a trip to a studio — take it at home, crop here, print for cents.
• Visa applicants juggling several formats at once — a Schengen application, a US visa, and an Indian e-visa each want different dimensions from the same face.
• DV Lottery entrants who need the strict 600 × 600 digital JPEG and would rather not pay a service for a crop and resize.
• Parents making first-passport photos for babies and children, where studio sessions are genuinely hard.
• Students and workers abroad feeding ID photos to university portals, residence-permit applications, and transit-card systems that all want “passport style” images.

The common thread: the photography is easy with a phone, the printing is cheap at a pharmacy, and the only fiddly part — exact dimensions, ratio, and DPI — is what this tool automates.

Yes — and for a photo of your face tied to an identity document, that's worth caring about. Most online passport-photo services upload your portrait to their servers for processing; some retain it. This tool does the entire job — decoding the image, cropping with Cropper.js, rendering to canvas at the target size, writing the DPI metadata bytes, and building the print sheet — with JavaScript running in your browser tab. The photo is read straight from your device into memory and never attached to a network request. Close the tab and nothing persists anywhere.