A photo the size the passport office asks.
Resize a photo to 2 × 2 inches or 35 × 45 mm at 300 DPI in your browser, with nothing uploaded, then check it against your country's own rules.
By Suraj Kumar5 min read
Passport and visa photos come in a few common sizes: 2 by 2 inches in the United States, 35 by 45 millimetres in the United Kingdom and many other countries. The KeepSimp image resizer can make either size from a photo you already have, in your browser. What it cannot do is tell you whether the photo itself will be accepted, so this guide starts there.
What a resizer can and cannot do.
A resizer gets the shape and the number of pixels right. It does not measure how large your head is in the frame, check your expression, the light, your glasses or the age of the photo. Each country's passport office sets those rules on its own pages, and they are stricter than most people expect.
Read your own office's rules first. The UK's, for example, ask for a printed photo 45 mm high and 35 mm wide, a head 29 to 34 mm from crown to chin, a plain cream or light grey background, and a photo that is not cut down from a larger picture. For applying online they ask for a digital photo of at least 600 by 750 pixels instead. The US State Department asks for 2 by 2 inches on a white or off-white background.
2 × 2 inches: one preset.
Open the image resizer and add your photo. Under More options, open Size, choose Presets, then Print, and pick 2 × 2 in photo. That is 600 by 600 pixels at 300 DPI, and the resolution is written into JPEG and PNG files so print software opens them at 2 inches.
The frame is square, so part of a tall photo is trimmed. Drag the picture inside the frame to place your head, or use the arrow keys. Smart focus can guess a starting point, but it looks for detail and colour, not faces, so check it.
35 × 45 mm, or any other size.
Under Size, choose Dimensions, set the unit to millimetres, type 35 and 45, and pick 300 DPI. The resizer works out the pixels and crops to fill the frame. Drag the picture to choose what stays.
Any other size works the same way, in millimetres, centimetres or inches. If your office gives a size in pixels for an online application, type the pixels instead.
35 ÷ 25.4 × 300 = 413 px wide
45 ÷ 25.4 × 300 = 531 px highA plain background.
Most offices want a plain, light background. The Profile picture background changer can put white or a colour behind you on your device: choose White under What goes behind it?
Be careful with this. Some offices refuse photos that have been changed by software, and a background put in afterwards can count. If your rules say so, take the photo again against a plain wall instead.
Print it at its real size.
When you print, choose actual size or 100%, not fit to page, so the 2 inches or 45 millimetres stay what they are. The resolution written into the file tells most print software the size; check the first print with a ruler.
Keep your original photo. If the office asks for another size later, you can start again from it.
Further reading
Topics: passport photo size · passport size photo · 2x2 photo · 35x45 mm photo · resize photo for passport · passport photo 600x600 · photo size in mm · print passport photo
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