Passport photos for babies and newborns

What the UK lets you off

Three of the rules that make an adult photo difficult do not apply to a baby applying for a British passport. GOV.UK states them in one line each: "Children under 6 do not have to be looking directly at the camera or have a plain expression", and "Children under one do not have to have their eyes open" (GOV.UK, photo requirements). A sleeping newborn, eyes shut, mouth doing something odd, is not automatically a problem for a UK passport. Stop waiting for the shot where she looks at the lens.

What is not relaxed is the geometry and the company she keeps: still 35 × 45 mm, head chin to crown 29–34 mm, plain cream or light grey background, taken in the last month, "unaltered by computer software". And the child must be alone in the frame, which is the rule that catches people.

The rule nobody relaxes

GOV.UK: "Children must be on their own in the picture." Then the sentence that decides how you hold the camera: "You can support their head with your hand, but your hand must not be visible in the photo." Supporting the baby is allowed; your hand appearing is not. A thumb at the edge of the frame, a sleeve behind the shoulder, a parent's knee in the corner: each of those is a photo of two people, and the requirement says one. The same applies in Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands, where no other person, including a supporting hand, may appear.

Add the second baby-specific line from GOV.UK, "Babies must not be holding toys or using dummies", and the dummy that would settle her for exactly the ten seconds you need is out. Settle her first, take the dummy out, then shoot, with the camera already framed. This is also why photographing a baby upright almost never works at home: under six months there is no version of sitting against a plain wall that does not involve somebody holding her. The way around it is not a better grip. It is gravity.

The sheet technique, step by step

Lay the baby on her back on a plain sheet and photograph her from directly above. The sheet becomes the background, the floor holds her head still, and nobody has to touch her.

1. Pick the sheet by the authority's background rule, not by habit. White is correct for a US passport and wrong for a British one. See the table below and passport photo background colour.
2. Iron it or stretch it flat. A crease reads as a line across the background, a fold as a shadow. Plain means plain: no pattern, no embroidered edge, no cot-blanket texture.
3. Put her down with her head slightly away from the light. A window to one side and a little behind the top of her head gives soft, even light with no nose shadow across the cheek. No flash. Shadows and lighting covers the two shadows that get photos returned.
4. Stand over her and hold the phone flat. The back of the phone parallel to the sheet, not tilted. A tilted camera stretches the forehead and shortens the chin, which then measures wrong when you crop. Keep the lens roughly 60–80 cm above her face; leaning in close with a wide phone lens is what produces balloon-headed newborn photos.
5. Check the hands and hair. Arms out of frame, blanket pulled below the shoulders, nothing over the chin, and no hair in front of the eyes.
6. Take twenty, then crop. Burst mode and choose. Do not adjust anything afterwards; if the chin is smeared with milk, wipe her and shoot again rather than fixing it in software. The photo checker draws the head-height band over the image in millimetres.

A second adult out of frame is useful for keeping her still. They can be in the room; they cannot be in the picture. Taking a passport photo with an iPhone covers lens choice and why portrait mode is the wrong tool here.

Which colour sheet, by country

People reach for a white sheet by default, and two of the countries below reject white outright.

Where a cell says the head height is not published, that is the honest state of it: the authority gives no millimetre range, so nobody should quote you one. Full formats are on the size pages for the UK, the United States and Ireland.

Car seats, blankets and Canada

The advice that circulates for infants is to photograph the baby in a car seat with a plain white blanket draped behind her, and in principle it is sound: the seat holds the head upright, the blanket gives a plain background, and nobody is touching her. It works wherever the background rule accepts the blanket's colour and no part of the seat, straps or buckle shows in the crop. Chest straps are the usual failure; pull them clear and frame tight enough to exclude the padding.

The version of that advice attached specifically to Canada could not be confirmed against IRCC's own photo page, which refused an automated request while this guide was written, so it is not stated here as a Canadian rule. That matters less than it sounds, because Canada requires the photograph to be taken by a commercial photographer and stamped on the back with the studio name and the date. A home print cannot satisfy that whatever it measures, and a Canadian baby photo is therefore the photographer's problem to solve, not yours. The same is true in France, where a professional or an approved ePhoto booth is required, and in Germany, which since 1 May 2025 accepts only digital photographs taken at the authority or sent by the photographer.

Measuring a head that will not hold still

Chin to crown on a newborn is awkward to judge: fine hair has no clear top edge, and a soft skull changes shape depending on how she is lying. Measure to the top of the head as the hair actually sits in the photograph, without flattening or fluffing it, and take the chin at the bottom of the jaw rather than at a fold of neck. If the number lands near the edge of the band, shoot again from slightly further away instead of stretching the crop to fit. Head size, explained covers how the ranges are defined.

Then leave the face alone. The UK requires the photo to be "unaltered by computer software". Canada publishes a zero-tolerance list naming brightness, contrast, colour and sharpness corrections, background replacement, filters and AI tools. The State Department instructs applicants not to change the photo using computer software, phone applications or filters, or artificial intelligence, and says it checks photos for AI use. Mexico does not accept retouched photographs, and Ireland's Passport Online upload must not be digitally enhanced. Swapping a patterned cot blanket for a clean grey background in software is exactly the operation those authorities describe rejecting; cropping and resizing are a different act, and every one of them asks for those. The AI editing ban sets out which authority says what, and the background page covers getting a plain one in camera.

The clock nobody mentions

A printed UK photo must have been taken in the last month, and Mexico will not accept one more than 30 days old. For an adult that is a formality; for a three-month-old it is the whole problem, because the spares you took in a good week are worth nothing by the time the form is ready. Take the photograph when you are about to apply, not when the baby happens to be asleep in good light in March.

Print counts do not change with age: two identical prints for the UK, four for Ireland. Six US 2 × 2 photos tile one 4 × 6 sheet, which the 4 × 6 template lays out at true physical size; see printing passport photos on 4 × 6 paper for the borderless trimming trap. Uploading instead, the UK wants at least 600 × 750 px at 50 KB–10 MB, and file size and dimensions covers the rest.

Doing it here

The tool here crops to the format you choose, measures the head height in millimetres against the authority's published range, and checks sharpness, exposure, background and resolution. It runs in your browser, so a photograph of your child is never uploaded anywhere, and it does not retouch faces or replace backgrounds. Start at the UK passport photo tool, the US one, or Canada's format.

Our iOS app, Passport Photo: Photo Maker ID, is free to download and gives one free export before asking you to upgrade to Pro. The website is the unlimited one, and with a baby you will want more than one attempt, so stay in the browser.

No tool can promise a photograph will be accepted, this one included; the issuing authority decides when it sees the file. What you can do is remove the reasons it gets sent back, and with an infant those are short and specific: a hand in the frame, a dummy, a patterned blanket, a tilted camera. Run the at-home checklist before you print, and read why passport photos get rejected if you have had one returned already.