Taking a passport photo at home

The whole job, in order

Check first that your country accepts a photo you took yourself, because four common ones effectively do not. If yours does: stand half a metre in front of a plain wall facing a window, in clothes that are not the wall's colour, with the phone at your eye height a metre and a half away, portrait mode and flash off. Shoot ten frames with your mouth closed, crop to the millimetres your authority publishes, check the head height and the file, then print.

Step 0. Check a home photo is allowed at all

This is the step people skip, and the only one that can waste the afternoon. Four authorities we checked close the door on a home-made photo.

• Canada. The printed photo must be taken by a commercial photographer and stamped on the back, which no home printer produces. Canada does publish digital specifications — 3:2 portrait, at least 1800 × 1200 px, 200 KB to 5 MB, head 45–50% — but the stamp is why a home print cannot satisfy the printed route (canada.ca, and our Canada page).
• France. The photo must come from a professional photographer or an approved ePhoto booth — no self-taken route (France).
• Germany. Since 1 May 2025 only digital photos are accepted, taken at the authority itself or sent in by the photographer. A file made on your kitchen wall has no path in (Germany).
• Mexico. Digital, digitised or retouched photographs are not accepted, and the photo must be no more than 30 days old — the strictest recency rule we found (Mexico).

Where a home photo is planned for: GOV.UK expects you to take the digital photo on your own device, while noting that a booth or shop photo is more likely to be approved (gov.uk). Ireland accepts selfies through Passport Online if the upload is not digitally enhanced. The United States sets no rule about who holds the camera; its rules are about the file.

Step 1. The wall

Pick the wall before the room. The background colour is prescribed, and it is not the same colour everywhere.

A white bathroom wall is wrong for a UK application and forbidden for a French one. With no wall in the right colour, a plain sheet taped up smooth will do: one flat colour, nothing on it. Stand half a metre clear so your shadow falls behind you rather than onto it (background colour, background page).

Step 2. The light

Face a window, in daylight, with the wall behind you. That one arrangement lights the face evenly, puts no hard shadow on the wall and needs no flash. GOV.UK states the target plainly: no shadows on your face or behind you.

Overhead ceiling lights are the usual culprit, dropping shadow into the eye sockets and under the nose; switch them off. In weak daylight, bounce a lamp off a white ceiling to fill the shadow rather than adding a new one, and keep direct sun off your face (shadows and lighting).

Step 3. What to wear

Everyday clothes, in a colour that is not the wall's. A cream jumper against the cream background the UK asks for leaves your shoulders undefined, and the UK wants clear contrast.

• No uniforms. Ireland bans civil and military uniforms and insignia. The United States bans uniforms, uniform-like clothing and camouflage.
• Glasses off for anything American. They have not been accepted for US passports or visas since November 2016. The UK, Ireland, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands allow them without glare, with clear lenses and frames clear of the eyes — but taking them off removes a class of failure (glasses).
• Head coverings are accepted for religious or medical reasons in every authority we checked, with the face visible from the chin to the forehead (head coverings).

Hats, headphones and jewellery that catches the light all come off (what to wear).

Step 4. The camera settings

Rear camera, ordinary photo mode. Then turn four things off, because an authority that bans edited photos does not distinguish your edits from your phone's.

1. Portrait mode. It computes a fake blur behind you, and the blur edge fails around hair.
2. Beauty, smooth skin, face retouch and photographic styles. Often on out of the box, and too subtle to see on a phone screen.
3. Flash. It throws a hard-edged shadow onto the wall and a bright disc onto glasses.
4. Zoom. Pinching in crops the sensor and upscales what is left, softening the detail a sharpness check looks at.

The model-specific settings — mirroring, HDR, scene optimisers — are in the iPhone guide.

Step 5. Distance and height

About a metre and a half from the lens, with the lens at your eye height and vertical rather than tilted. An arm's length puts the phone two thirds of a metre away, close enough that your nose and forehead render larger than your ears — and that distortion cannot be undone later without editing.

Hand it to someone, or prop it on a shelf and use the timer. A phone on a table looking up at you adds a chin and shortens the forehead, breaking the chin-to-crown measurement everything depends on.

Step 6. The shot

Square on, shoulders level, eyes open and looking straight at the lens. Mouth closed and expression plain for the UK, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Mexico and a Schengen visa. The United States is the one authority in our set that permits a smile, and only with the mouth closed (can you smile).

Take eight or ten frames, moving nothing between them; blinks and head tilts are invisible on a phone preview and obvious at full size. Babies differ — UK under-sixes need not look at the camera or hold a neutral expression, under-ones need not have their eyes open, and in the UK, Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands nobody else may appear, including a supporting hand (baby photos).

Step 7. The crop

Cropping and resizing are what every authority asks for, and a different act from retouching. The numbers are millimetres of head in the finished photo, not percentages you can judge by eye.

Ireland, Mexico, Brazil and Spain publish no head height at all, and no tool should invent one for them. Head size covers how it is measured; sizes explained covers why 35 × 45 mm is less universal than it looks. The size finder holds all 82 formats, and the country tools — US, UK, Canada, Schengen, DS-160 — crop to these figures and report the head in millimetres.

Step 8. The check

Look at the frame at full size, and check the file as well as the face: a UK digital photo needs at least 600 × 750 px and 50 KB to 10 MB, and a DS-160 upload must be square, colour and 600 × 600 to 1200 × 1200 px.

File size and pixels and DPI cover the two ways a good photo fails on upload. The photo checker runs the rest in your browser — head height, eye line, sharpness, exposure, lighting, background, resolution — against the authority's own range, without uploading or retouching anything. It cannot tell you a photo will be accepted; only the issuing authority decides that. It shows you the measurements before a clerk does (why photos get rejected).

Step 9. The print

If your route needs paper, the print has its own failure modes. GOV.UK asks for two identical prints, in colour, on plain white photographic paper with no border, printed to a professional standard, in focus, without creases or tears, unmarked on both sides, taken in the last month, and not a cut-down version of a larger picture (gov.uk). Ireland asks for four identical prints; the Netherlands for at least 400 DPI.

A home inkjet on ordinary paper does not meet "photographic paper, professional standard"; photo paper and a printer that resolves fine detail can, and a print counter is surer. Walgreens publishes 4 × 6 prints at $0.39 each for 1–99, states its prints are borderless, and offers a "cropless full photo" option; its in-store passport counter is a separate product at about $16.99 for two. CVS publishes prints from $0.25 but no verifiable 4 × 6 unit price (the pharmacy counters).

The tools here run in your browser, free, unlimited and unwatermarked, and nothing you load leaves your device (does a tool upload your photo?). There is also a free iOS app, Passport Photo: Photo Maker ID; it gives one free export and then asks for Pro, so the website is the unlimited one. For a renewal, see renewal photos; a visa photo is often not the same file (passport versus visa).