"Passport photo" sounds like one size, but it is not. The United States wants a square, most of Europe a 35 by 45 mm rectangle, Canada something much larger, and a Vietnamese passport form asks for 4 by 6 cm. Each authority also sets how big your head must be inside the frame. This article lists the sizes we could confirm from official sources, turns them into pixels for printing, and explains the mistakes that get photos sent back. You can crop and print any of them with the passport and ID photo maker.
Rules change. Everything below was checked on 13 October 2026. Before you print, check the current requirements of the office that will receive your photo: background colour, glasses, how recent the photo is and whether home prints are accepted all vary.
The sizes
| Document | Photo size | Head, chin to crown | Source checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| US passport and visa | 2 × 2 in (51 mm) | 1 to 1 3/8 in (25 to 35 mm) | U.S. Department of State |
| UK passport (printed photo) | 35 × 45 mm | 29 to 34 mm | GOV.UK, "Photos for passports" |
| Schengen visa, German documents | 35 × 45 mm | 32 to 36 mm | German missions' biometric photo guide |
| Canadian passport | 50 × 70 mm | 31 to 36 mm | Canada.ca, "Passport photo requirements" |
| Chinese visa | 33 × 48 mm | 28 to 33 mm | Chinese Visa Application Service Center notices |
| Vietnamese passport | 4 × 6 cm | not stated | form TK01, Circular 73/2021/TT-BCA (via legal summaries) |
| South Korean passport | 3.5 × 4.5 cm | not confirmed | Korean local government passport page |
Two notes on that table. The Vietnamese size comes from summaries of the passport application form rather than the gazette text itself, so treat it as the usual requirement and confirm it at the immigration office or on the national public service portal. For Korea we could confirm the frame size but not an official head range, and for Japan and India we found only third-party pages, so we left them out rather than guess.
The UK numbers apply to printed photos. Online UK applications use a digital photo, which GOV.UK says must be at least 600 pixels wide and 750 pixels tall.
From millimetres to pixels
A print shop or printer needs a file whose pixels match the physical size at its print resolution. At 300 dots per inch, one inch is 25.4 mm, so one millimetre is 300 ÷ 25.4 ≈ 11.81 pixels. Rounded to whole pixels:
| Size | Pixels at 300 DPI |
|---|---|
| 2 × 2 in | 600 × 600 |
| 35 × 45 mm | 413 × 531 |
| 33 × 48 mm | 390 × 567 |
| 40 × 60 mm | 472 × 709 |
| 50 × 70 mm | 591 × 827 |
| 30 × 40 mm | 354 × 472 |
The head range converts the same way. On a UK photo, 29 to 34 mm of head is 343 to 402 pixels of the 531-pixel height, or 64% to 76% of the photo. On a US photo, 1 to 1 3/8 inches is 300 to 413 pixels of 600, or 50% to 69%. That is why a selfie cropped "roughly" almost never fits: a head that fills 85% of the frame is too big for every standard in the table.
A worked example: six UK photos on one print
You have a portrait taken against a light wall, and you want UK passport photos printed on a standard 10 × 15 cm photo print.
- In the tool, choose UK passport, 35 × 45 mm. The output is 413 × 531 pixels.
- Zoom until the top of your head and your chin fall between the two ovals (29 and 34 mm high), with the face centred.
- Under Print sheet, choose 10 × 15 cm paper. With a 3 mm margin and 2 mm between photos, two columns take 35 + 2 + 35 = 72 mm of the 94 mm available, and three rows take 45 + 2 + 45 + 2 + 45 = 139 mm of 144. So six photos fit, centred on the sheet. Turning the paper sideways also gives six (three across, two down), so the tool keeps it upright.
- Download the PDF and print it at 100% or "actual size". Measure one photo with a ruler: it should be 35 mm wide.
The same sheet holds four Vietnamese 4 × 6 cm photos, nine 3 × 4 cm photos or two Canadian 50 × 70 mm photos. On A4 with a 5 mm margin, thirty 35 × 45 mm photos fit (five across, six down).
Common mistakes
- "Fit to page" when printing. The printer scales the sheet, and a 35 mm photo comes out 33 or 37 mm. Always print at actual size and check with a ruler.
- Confusing 2 × 2 in with 5 × 5 cm. Two inches is 50.8 mm. A 5 cm square is 0.8 mm short on each side; use the inch size for US documents.
- Head too big or too small. Phone portraits are usually cropped tight. Leave space above the head when you take the photo so you can crop to the right head height.
- Edited photos. Background replacement, beauty filters and skin smoothing are forbidden by most authorities. Canada.ca, for example, says photos must be unaltered. Retake the photo instead.
- Home prints where they are not accepted. Canada requires photos taken and printed by a commercial photographer. Check before you print at home.
- Old photos. Many offices require a photo taken within the last six months. A cropped photo from three years ago may be the right size and still be refused.
- Low-quality JPG. Heavy compression leaves blocky artefacts around the face. Export at a high quality, or use PNG for the print shop.
The passport and ID photo maker does the cropping and the sheet layout in your browser; the photo is never uploaded. If an online form needs a smaller file, the image toolkit can compress it afterwards.