Chinese visa photo requirements: 33 x 48 mm, white background and 120 KB

A Chinese visa photo is 33 x 48 mm, a portrait rectangle with a white or nearly white background, a head of 28 to 33 mm and a small gap above it. The online form takes a smaller digital version of 420 x 560 pixels and up to 120 KB. It is a different shape from the 35 x 45 mm photo of most European documents and from the US square, which is the first reason a photo made for another country comes back wrong.

This page puts every number a Chinese visa photo has into one table. The figures were read from the Chinese embassy page named below on 17 September 2026, and they are the same ones getPNG’s passport photo maker uses. getPNG crops and places the photograph at these sizes. It does not judge the biometrics, and nothing here is a promise that your photo will be accepted.

The table

Every row comes from one authority’s page, checked on 17 September 2026. The page does not publish a minimum file size, so none is stated here. It also does not say how the head is measured when there is a lot of hair, so the head range is taken as chin to the top of the head and you should look at the page itself for anything unusual about your own photograph. Rules for visas can differ between the embassy, a visa centre and the online portal you apply through, and the application you are filling in is the source that settles your case.

What the numbers add up to

The table lists seven separate rules. Three sums turn them into a picture you can aim at.

The head fills about 58 to 69 percent of the height. The photo is 48 mm tall and the head is 28 to 33 mm, so the head is 28 / 48 = 58 percent at the smallest and 33 / 48 = 69 percent at the largest. For comparison, the UK asks for 29 to 34 mm in a 45 mm photo, which is about 64 to 76 percent, so a UK crop has a head that is a little too big for China, and a China crop has a head that is a little too small for the UK.

Almost nothing is left above the head. With 3 to 5 mm above the crown and a head of 28 to 33 mm, the top of the head is 31 to 38 mm down from the top edge. That leaves 10 to 17 mm for the chin, the neck and the shoulders in a 48 mm photo, which is why a Chinese visa photo looks tightly framed from the top and shows only a little of the shoulders.

The digital file is not the print at a higher resolution. The print is 33 x 48 mm, which is a ratio of 0.6875 wide to tall. The digital photo is 420 x 560 pixels, a ratio of exactly 0.75, which is 3 by 4. Those are different shapes, so the pixel file is not a scan of the printed photo and cannot be made by simply scaling one to the other. The digital photo has to be cropped to its own shape, and the form judges the pixel count it names, not the millimetres.

Cropping for 33 x 48 mm

The practical trouble is the head size. At arm’s length or from a distance of three metres the head is small in the frame, and cropping in tight to reach 28 mm just gives you a soft picture, because the pixels were never there.

Work backwards from the head instead. Suppose the head measures 900 pixels from chin to crown on your original:

• the head must fill 58 to 69 percent of the cropped height, so the cropped photo is between 900 / 0.69 = about 1,300 and 900 / 0.58 = about 1,550 pixels tall;
• the width is then 33 / 48 of that, about 900 to 1,070 pixels;
• that crop is scaled down to 420 x 560 for the digital form, which is a reduction, so the photo stays sharp.

You do not need to do that sum yourself, because the passport photo maker draws the allowed band and you move the photo until the crown and chin sit inside it. The sum tells you how much picture you must have taken: a head that is only a few hundred pixels tall cannot make a sharp 420 x 560 photograph.

White, or close to white

The rule is “white or close to white, no border”. Two parts of that need care.

Close to white is not grey. A white wall lit from one side has a grey half, and the shadow of your head and shoulders falls on it if you stand against it. Stand about a metre in front of the wall so the shadow falls on the floor, and face a window so the light is even across the wall and your face. A pale cream wall can look close to white by eye and photograph as yellow under a warm lamp, so use daylight.

No border means no frame, line or edge colour drawn around the photograph. A cropped photo should simply end at its edge.

Do not paint the background white afterwards. A replaced background is an edit, and an ID photo is checked for exactly that. A cutout tool is the right tool for a sticker or a product picture and the wrong one here; passport photo backgrounds explains why, and what “plain” means to the people looking at the photo.

Glasses and expression

The embassy page allows glasses, which is more relaxed than the US visa or the Indian e-Visa. The conditions are that the lenses are not tinted, that there is no glare and that the frames do not cover any part of the eyes. Those three are all things you can check on the picture: look for a bright patch on a lens, a frame edge crossing the pupil and any colour in the glass.

The practical advice is still to take them off for the ten seconds it takes, because glare is the commonest way to fail the condition and it depends on a window or lamp that you cannot easily move. If you wear them every day and the photograph without them would not look like you, take several shots with them on, at different angles to the window, and keep the one with the clearest lenses.

Beyond that, the usual habits for an ID photo apply: look straight at the camera, keep a neutral expression with the mouth closed, keep both eyes open and clear of hair, and have nobody else in the frame. The embassy page is the source for how each of those is worded.

The online file

The digital photo is 420 x 560 pixels and up to 120 KB. At 420 x 560 a photograph is 235,200 pixels, and 120 KB is about half a byte per pixel, so a JPEG at this size is small and a photograph that is noisy or full of detail may need its quality turned down a good way to fit. If the file is over the limit, compressing an image to an exact size explains why the quality steps down while the pixel size stays fixed, which is what the form insists on.

Three points save a failed upload:

1. Start from the original. A photo that has been through a messaging app has already lost detail and often most of its size.
2. Check the pixels. The file should be exactly 420 x 560. A larger one is not a better one for this form.
3. Check the file size after saving, not before. A file you resized in one app and saved in another can come out at a different size.

The US visa file has its own pixel and size limits, which look similar but are not the same; they are in US visa photo requirements.

Taking one at home

The photograph is the same job as for any other country, with a tighter crop:

1. Find a plain white or very pale wall with nothing on it and stand about a metre in front of it.
2. Face a window in daylight, on an overcast day if you can, with no flash and no ceiling light.
3. Turn off portrait mode, beauty filters and skin smoothing, and use the rear camera.
4. Have somebody take it from about two metres away at eye height, with head and shoulders in the frame and clear space all round, because a tight crop needs plenty of picture to start from.
5. Crop to 33 x 48 mm with the head between 28 and 33 mm and 3 to 5 mm above it.
6. For the form, save at 420 x 560 pixels under 120 KB. For a print, print at 100 percent with no border and no fit to page, then measure the cut photo with a ruler.

How to take a passport photo at home has the detail on each of those steps.

What the tool does, and what it does not

getPNG crops and places the photograph at the official size and shows you where the head sits against the range the embassy page gives. That is the part a person is worst at doing by eye.

It does not judge the photograph. Whether your expression reads as neutral, whether the light across your face is even and whether the wall counts as white enough are decided by the authority that receives the application, and the embassy page linked in the table is the only source that settles it. No website can promise your photo will be accepted, and one that does is telling you something it has no way of knowing.

For the same checks on the other documents getPNG knows, the passport photo requirements table lists twelve of them with the official source for each, and Indian passport photo size sets a 35 x 45 mm passport against a square visa photo in the same way this page does for China. Before you upload any ID photo to a site, read whether it is safe to upload photos online.

Questions

What size is a Chinese visa photo?

33 x 48 mm, a portrait rectangle that is slightly narrower and taller than the 35 x 45 mm photo most countries use. The digital photo for the online form is 420 x 560 pixels. Neither is the 2 x 2 inch square of the US visa, so a photo cropped for another country will not fit without a new crop from the original.

How big should the head be in a Chinese visa photo?

The embassy page gives 28 to 33 mm from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head, with 3 to 5 mm between the top of the head and the top edge of the photo. In a 48 mm tall photo that is a head filling roughly 58 to 69 percent of the height. Too small is the usual fault, caused by taking the photo from too far away and then cropping tight.

What background does a Chinese visa photo need?

White or close to white, with no border. Close to white leaves room for a very pale wall, but a grey shadow or a coloured wall is not close to white. Take the photo against a plain pale wall with nothing on it, standing about a metre in front so no shadow falls behind you.

Can I wear glasses in a Chinese visa photo?

The embassy page allows them, as long as the lenses are not tinted, there is no glare on them and the frames do not cover the eyes. Glare is hard to avoid at home with a window or lamp in front of you, so if you can take them off for the photograph, that removes the risk.

What file does the online form take?

A digital photo of 420 x 560 pixels and up to 120 KB, according to the embassy page read on 17 September 2026. The page does not give a minimum file size. Which form or portal you use, and what it says at the upload step, can differ, so the application you are filling in has the last word.

Does getPNG make a Chinese visa photo that will be accepted?

It crops and places your photo at 33 x 48 mm, shows the head against the 28 to 33 mm range and saves the 420 x 560 pixel file. It does not judge the photograph. Whether the expression, the light and the background are acceptable is decided by the authority that receives it, and no website can promise the outcome.