How to take a passport photo with your phone that gets accepted

Can a phone photo pass?

Yes, you can take your own passport photo with a phone, as long as it meets the same rules a studio photo has to meet. Offices do not ask what camera took the photo. They check the size of the head in the frame, where the eyes sit, the background, the light on the face, your expression, and, for an online form, the pixel size and the file size. A phone camera of the last several years has more than enough detail for all of that. Where home photos fail is the framing and the light, and both are in your control.

This guide walks through taking the photo, placing your head, the background, and getting either a file for an online form or a sheet to print. The tool it uses is the Passport Photo Maker on this site, which runs in Safari or Chrome on the phone. The camera, the face finding and the background change all happen on the phone, and the photo is never uploaded.

Before you take it

Set up these five things before you take the photo.

• Light from the front. Face a window in daylight, or stand where the light falls evenly on both sides of your face. A lamp to one side leaves half the face in shadow, and offices reject that.
• A plain, pale wall behind you, with a gap. Stand a step or two away from the wall so your shadow falls on the floor rather than behind your head.
• The phone at eye level, about a metre away. Ask someone to hold it, or prop it on a shelf and use the timer. Holding it at arm’s length yourself makes your face look wider and tilts your head.
• Glasses and hats off, unless the rules for your document allow them. Hair away from the eyes and both ears showing where the rules ask for it.
• A neutral face with your mouth closed, looking straight at the camera.

The exact rules differ by document. The Passport Photo Maker shows them for the one you pick, with a link to the office’s own page.

Pick your document, then take the photo

1. Open Passport Photo Maker. The top of the tool names a document and its sizes, such as “600 × 600 px · JPG up to 240 KB” for a US visa (DS-160). If it is not yours, tap Change and pick it from the list of passports, visas, IDs and exam forms.
2. Tap Take the photo now. The camera opens with a head outline drawn for that document. Line up the top of your head and your chin with the marks.
3. Switch camera swaps between the front and back cameras. The timer button cycles from Timer off to 3 and 10 seconds, which is what you want when the phone is propped up.
4. Tap Take the photo. If you already have a good photo, Choose your photo loads it from your library instead.

Under the camera there is also a row of sizes, so you can change the document without closing it.

Place the head on the guides

The photo opens under two dashed lines. Drag it until the top of your head sits on one and your chin on the other, and pinch to zoom (or use the Zoom slider). Straighten fixes a slight tilt, and the rotate buttons turn a sideways photo. If you would rather not do it by hand, Auto-fit my face finds your face on the phone and lines it up for you; the first time it downloads about 17 MB, and after that it is kept on the phone.

The head size is the rule most home photos break, usually because the photo was taken from too far away and the head is too small in the frame. The guides are drawn from the document’s own measurements, so if the head fits between the lines, it is the size the office asks for.

The background, and the honest part

If your wall is not plain, the tool can replace the background with White, Off-white, Light grey or Blue. It finds you in the photo, cuts out what is behind you and fills it with the plain colour, on the phone; the first change downloads about 26 MB. Only the background changes. Your face, hair and clothes are not retouched. Original keeps the photo as you took it.

Now the part to read before you use it. Several offices say a passport photo must not be altered at all. The US passport rules shown in the tool say not to change the photo with software, phone apps, filters or AI, and other documents carry a similar line. For those, keep Original and take the photo against a plain, pale wall. Replacing the background is fine for job, school and exam forms, which only want a plain background, and for documents whose rules do not forbid it. If you are not sure, the rules under your document and the link to the office’s page decide, not this guide.

Save the file, or print a sheet

Under Checked against the official rules, the tool lists what it measured on the finished photo: the head between the lines, the eyes in their band where the document sets one, and whether the background reads as plain and light. The file it makes has the document’s pixel size and stays under its KB limit, so a form that checks either will accept it. Tap Save or share photo (Save photo on Android) to keep the JPG on the phone or send it straight into the application.

For a paper photo, the Print sheet lays copies out on 4 × 6 in, A4 or Letter paper, with Lines to cut along if you want them. The number of copies comes from the photo’s size and the paper:

Photo size	4 × 6 in sheet	A4	Letter
35 × 45 mm (UK, Schengen, India, Pakistan and others)	6	25	25
2 × 2 in (US passport and visa)	6	15	12

Print the sheet at 100%, or actual size. If the print window is left on “Fit to page”, it scales the sheet and every photo comes out the wrong size. 4 × 6 in is the standard size for photo prints, so a photo counter or a home photo printer can print that sheet as it is.

Which tool for which job

The Passport Photo Maker is for documents with exact rules: a passport, a visa, an ID card, an exam board. For a job application, a school form or an office ID that only asks for “a passport-size photo” on a plain background, Passport Size Photo is quicker: it replaces the background and crops to the common sizes without the document rules. And if the form’s upload box rejects your file for its size, the compress-to-50 KB page gets a photo under that limit.