United States Passport Photo Maker

You get a photo and a passport photo checker report

Sizing the photo is the easy half. The reason people end up back at the photo booth is that something about the photo itself breaks a rule, and you usually find out weeks later when the application bounces. So along with the finished photo and the print sheet, the tool gives you a compliance report: ten checks, each marked pass, warning or fail, with a one-line note on what to change. Green all the way down means print it. A red row means take another photo now, while it costs you nothing.

The print sheet is a standard 4 x 6 in photo print with several copies of your photo and thin cut lines, so you can print it at home or at any supermarket photo kiosk for the price of one print.

What the compliance check looks at

Most passport photos get rejected for a handful of boring reasons, and almost all of them are visible before you ever pay for a print. Here is what each of the ten checks means for a United States photo.

Neutral expression

Mouth closed, no grin, no raised eyebrows. Teeth showing or an open mouth is a fail, because the face matching software at the border is trained on neutral faces and it is the single most common reason a photo is sent back. A slight closed-mouth smile only gets a warning: most authorities accept it, but neutral is safer.

Eyes open

Both eyes open and clearly visible, with no hair across them. A blink, squint or heavy fringe over the eyes is a fail.

Head straight

Your head should face the camera squarely, not tilted or turned to one side. Even a small tilt can fail this check, so stand square to the camera and look straight at the lens.

Glasses

Glare on lenses is a fail everywhere. Plain glasses without glare are a warning rather than a fail, because the rules differ: the US and UK now ask you to remove them, while several other countries still allow them. The safest answer is to take them off.

No headwear

Hats, caps and hoods are not allowed. Religious or medical head coverings are fine as long as your whole face is visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead, so this one is a warning, not a fail.

Even lighting

Shadows across the face or a dark shadow on the wall behind you can get a photo rejected. Facing a window in daylight, with the light source in front of you rather than behind, fixes this in almost every case.

Plain background

The background has to be a single plain colour with nothing else in the frame. This is the one check we fix for you: the tool replaces whatever was behind you with the correct flat colour for your country, so you can take the photo in your kitchen. It only shows a warning if that step failed and you should retake the photo against a plain wall.

Sharp and clear

Blurry, grainy or low resolution photos print badly and can be refused. Use the main rear camera of your phone rather than the front camera if you can, and make sure the photo is in focus on your eyes.

Head size in range

Every country specifies how big your head should be in the finished photo, measured from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head (25 to 35 mm on a 2 x 2 inch (51 x 51 mm) photo). We scale and crop your photo to land inside that range, and this check confirms the result.

Room around the head

If you were too close to the edge of the original photo there may not be enough space above your head or beside it once the photo is cropped to size. We pad the missing area with the background colour so you still get a correctly sized photo, but a warning here means it is worth stepping back and taking a new one.

The check is advisory. It catches the problems that account for the large majority of rejections, but the issuing authority makes the final call, so if anything shows red it is worth the thirty seconds it takes to retake the photo.