Passport and ID photo sizes by country, with pixels and upload limits

Photo size means three different measurements

A paper application wants a print measured in inches or millimeters. An online form wants pixel dimensions and a file size in kilobytes. Both also set how tall your head must be in the frame, a number no ruler along the edge of the print will catch.

A US visa photo shows all three at once: a 2 × 2 inch print, a 600 × 600 pixel minimum for the upload, and a head that fills 50% to 69% of the image height. The State Department links print and pixels by asking for prints scanned at 300 pixels per inch: 2 inches × 300 = 600 pixels.

Every figure below was read on official pages on September 28, 2026, listed at the end. Rules change, so open the source before paying for prints.

Printed sizes for the US, UK, Schengen, Canada, Australia and India

Pixels are millimeters ÷ 25.4 × 300, rounded. Head height runs from the chin to the top of the head.

Where 35 × 45 mm comes from

ICAO Doc 9303, the specification behind machine-readable passports, says submitted portraits should be 45.0 × 35.0 mm (1.77 × 1.38 inches). The European Commission asks Schengen visa applicants for a photo in compliance with ICAO standards. The leaflet it publishes gives 35–40 mm in width and a face filling 70–80% of the photo; consulates state the full size, as Italy's does in Los Angeles.

India's Passport Seva writes the same size as 4.5 cm × 3.5 cm and needs no print at all when you apply at a Passport Seva Kendra. Canada publishes its size as 2 inches by 2¾ inches, a rounding of 50 × 70 mm.

The US visa page converts its head range as 22 mm to 35 mm. One inch is 25.4 mm and the passport page says 25–35 mm, so go by the inches.

Digital uploads: pixel dimensions and file size

Online forms replace the ruler with a validator. These are the limits each one publishes.

Why 600 × 600 is the practical choice for the US form

A 600 × 600 image in 24-bit color holds 1,080,000 bytes before compression. At the 20:1 ceiling that is 54 kB, and the 240 kB cap is reached at about 4.5:1, so almost any JPEG quality fits. At 1200 × 1200 the raw data is 4,320,000 bytes: 20:1 gives 216 kB and the cap sits at 18:1, which leaves a narrow window between too compressed and too heavy.

Print shape and upload shape can differ

The UK print is 35 × 45 mm, a 7:9 shape, but its upload minimum of 600 × 750 is 4:5, because the service crops the image itself. Canada prints at 5:7 and uploads at 2:3, and it does not accept a scanned copy of a printed photo.

Editing and home printing: what each country rejects

Several governments reject edited photos, and their definitions reach well past retouching a face. Some also rule out home prints.

• United States, passport: submit the original photo, unchanged by computer software, phone apps, filters or artificial intelligence. A background cropped with a retouching tool is one of the rejected examples.
• United Kingdom: the photo must be unaltered by computer software, and a photo taken on your own device is cropped for you by the online application.
• Canada: the photo must be taken by a commercial photographer and professionally printed; home prints are refused. Altering includes cropping around the head and shoulders, changing the background and removing shadows.
• Australia: two identical color prints on glossy, heavy-weight paper, produced by dye sublimation rather than an inkjet printer.
• India: the guidelines say photos should be unaltered by computer software, yet the Embassy of India in Berne lets applicants use an editing tool to make the background uniform and crop the image. Paper submissions do not accept a photograph in computer print.

The US visa upload allows cropping

The State Department offers its own photo tool that crops an image to exactly 600 × 600 pixels, and says the tool is for cropping only. The same page rules out photos digitally enhanced or altered to change your appearance.

Checking head height in pixels

No LivreImage tool detects a face or measures a head. You can still measure by hand, because the crop box shows its size in pixels while you drag it.

1. Open the finished image in Crop image, leave Free selected and press Crop.
2. Drag the box until its top edge touches the top of the head and its bottom edge the chin. The second number in the readout is the head height in pixels.
3. Compare it with the target, then press Cancel so nothing is cropped.

Targets

On a 600 × 600 US visa upload, 300 to 414 pixels. On a 413 × 531 Schengen photo, 372 to 424. On India's 630 × 810 upload, 648 to 688. For rules written in millimeters, size the image for 300 PPI first; one millimeter is then 11.8 pixels, so the UK's 29–34 mm becomes 343 to 401 pixels and Australia's 32–36 mm becomes 378 to 425.

Preparing the file in LivreImage

Everything runs in your browser and the photo is not uploaded. Use it where the authority lets you prepare the file yourself: the US visa forms, Indian uploads, and IDs such as student or employee badges.

1. Take the photo with room around the head and shoulders, against the background the rule names.
2. In Crop image, choose 1:1 for a square photo. There is no 7:9 button for 35 × 45 mm: choose Free and frame a box about 1.29 times taller than wide. Set the output format to PNG so the photo is not compressed twice.
3. In Resize image, type the target under Exact output: 600 × 600, 413 × 531 or 630 × 810. With both fields filled, the image is center-cropped to that shape, never stretched.
4. If the form caps file size, finish in Compress to 200 KB. Its 204,800-byte target sits under the 240 kB US cap and India's 250 KB, and the result card shows the final pixels and size.
5. For prints, order the exact size in inches or millimeters and measure the first one.

What it does not do

• No passport or visa presets, no face detection, no automatic head-size check.
• No printing.
• Every output loses its EXIF metadata, capture date included.
• Remove background swaps a background for white, which the US and Canada count as an alteration. Keep it for badges and profile photos.

If you print on 4 × 6 paper

LivreImage does not lay out sheets; this is arithmetic for whoever prints. A 4 × 6 inch sheet holds six 2 × 2 inch photos only with no margin or gap at all, and two with a quarter-inch border. Six 35 × 45 mm photos fit with 5 mm margins and 2 mm gaps, two across and three down.