A passport photo tool that crops and checks — and never retouches your face

No. The cropping, the face detection and the background work all run in this browser tab, on your own device. You can check that yourself: open the browser's developer tools, switch to the Network panel and make a photo — nothing is sent. Or turn off your internet connection after the page has loaded and make one anyway. It still works.

Cropping and resizing are expected — every authority asks for a specific size. Retouching is a different thing. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Mexico all state that they reject photos altered with software, and the State Department says it checks. That is why this tool leaves the background alone by default for those documents and tells you when the country you have chosen is one of them.

The counter at a US drugstore is around $17 for two photos. A plain 4 × 6 photo print from the same shop is a few tens of cents, and six US passport photos fit on one. Making the file here is free, so the whole job comes down to the price of a single ordinary print.

Build the print sheet here, which lays your photo out at its true physical size and writes the DPI into the file, then either print it at home at 100% scale or upload it as an ordinary 4 × 6 photo print. The two things that go wrong are "fit to page", which quietly resizes everything, and borderless printing, which trims the edges.

There is no single answer. Most of the world uses 35 × 45 mm; the United States and a few others use 2 × 2 inches; Canada uses 50 × 70 mm. The size on the paper matters less than the head height inside it, which is the measurement most rejected photos get wrong.

In the United States, yes — a natural smile with your mouth closed is fine. Almost everywhere else the answer is no: the UK, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Schengen visa standard all ask for a neutral expression with the mouth closed.

Not for a US passport or visa — glasses have not been accepted since 2016. The UK, Ireland, Canada, Italy and most of Europe do allow them, as long as there is no glare, the lenses are clear and the frames do not cover your eyes. Where there is any doubt, taking them off is never wrong.

Framing first — the head being the wrong size in the frame is the most common single cause. Then shadows, on the face or behind the head; then a background that is not plain; then softness, expression, glasses and, increasingly, evidence that the photo was edited.

Stand about a metre and a half from the camera and have someone else take it, or use the rear camera on a timer. Face a window. Turn off portrait mode and any beauty filter, because both alter the image. Then crop it here rather than in the phone's own editor.

Lay the baby on a plain white sheet and photograph from directly above. Most authorities relax their rules for infants: the UK does not require under-ones to have their eyes open, or under-sixes to look at the camera. What no authority relaxes is that nobody else may appear in the photo, including a supporting hand.

White is not the universal answer. France forbids a white background outright and wants light grey or light blue. The UK asks for cream or light grey. The Netherlands accepts grey, light blue or white. The tool shows the required colour for whichever document you pick.

For a print, pixels are the wrong unit — what matters is the physical size and having enough resolution behind it, which usually means 300 DPI or better. For an upload, the portal sets the numbers: the US DS-160 wants a square image between 600 × 600 and 1200 × 1200 px, and the UK wants at least 600 × 750.

It has to be inside a stated range, and the ranges differ more than people expect: 25–35 mm in the United States, 29–34 mm in the UK, 26–30 mm in the Netherlands. This tool measures your head from the crown marker to the chin marker and reports the result in millimetres against the range.

Yes, where it is worn for religious or medical reasons — that exception exists in every authority covered here. Your face must be visible from the bottom of the chin to the forehead, with both edges of the face clear and no shadows. Coverings worn for any other reason are not allowed.

The website is free with no account, no watermark and no limit on how many photos you make. The iOS app is free to download and gives you one free export, then asks for its Pro subscription. They are the same idea, but the unlimited one is the one you are on.

No, and be careful of anyone who does. The office you apply to makes that decision, sometimes with automated checks and sometimes with a person. What this tool can do is measure your photo against the published rules and tell you, in millimetres, where it stands.