How to take a passport photo at home with a phone

Most people searching for a passport photo online are looking for a booth they do not have to go to. The useful version of that answer is not a website: it is that you can take one at home with a phone and a wall, and that the part which goes wrong is never the camera.

This is how to do it so it is accepted, and what specifically gets rejected.

What you actually need

A plain wall. Daylight. Another person. That is the whole list.

You do not need a camera, a backdrop, a light kit or an app that promises approval. A phone from the last five years has several times the resolution a 35 x 45 mm print can use. Every common reason for rejection is about light, distance or editing, and none of those is solved by better equipment.

The wall, and the metre in front of it

Pick a wall with nothing on it: no sockets, no skirting board in frame, no picture rail, no texture, no curtain. Paint colour matters, and it is not always white. The United States and India want white or off-white, the UK wants cream or light grey, and France does not accept a white background at all. Check passport photo requirements by country before you decide which room to stand in.

Then stand about a metre away from it. This one thing prevents the most common rejection there is. Close to a wall, your own shadow lands on it and the photo shows a grey halo round your head. A metre of space and the shadow falls on the floor behind you, out of the frame entirely.

If you have no suitable wall, a plain sheet hung over a door works, provided you pull it flat. A fold reads as a shadow and fails for the same reason. Passport photo backgrounds goes through what each authority means by “plain”, including why you cannot fix a bad one afterwards.

The light

Face a window. That is the whole technique.

Daylight on an overcast day is the best light for this that exists: it comes from a large, even source and it lands on both sides of the face at once. A bright sunny day through a window is harsher, so stand a little further back from it, or hang a net curtain.

What fails:

• A ceiling light. It comes from above, so it puts shadows in the eye sockets and under the nose and chin.
• A window to one side only. One half of the face is lit and the other is in shadow, which several authorities reject outright.
• Flash. Straight-on flash flattens the face, reflects off glasses, and throws a hard shadow onto the wall behind you, which is the thing you moved a metre away to avoid.

If daylight is not available, two lamps at equal distance either side of the camera, both at face height, is the next best thing. One lamp is worse than no lamp.

The distance, and why a selfie fails

Have somebody else hold the phone, about two metres away, at the height of your eyes, with head and shoulders filling the frame and space above the head.

A photo taken at arm’s length fails for a reason that has nothing to do with composition. At that distance the lens is close enough to the face to enlarge whatever is nearest it, so the nose widens and the ears shrink. That is exactly the distortion the face-matching system at the other end is built to notice. The arm, or its shadow, usually turns up in the frame as well.

If you are alone, prop the phone on a shelf or a stack of books at eye height, step back to two metres, and use the timer. That works. Arm’s length does not.

Leave room above the head when you shoot. You can always crop in; you can never crop out.

The phone settings that quietly fail the photo

This is the modern version of the problem, and it catches people who did everything else right.

Recent phones smooth skin, brighten eyes and reshape faces by default in their portrait and beauty modes, and some do a little of it even in the normal mode. Every authority in the table rejects an edited photo, and a smoothed face is an edited photo whether or not you chose it.

So, before you shoot: use the rear camera, turn off portrait mode, turn off beauty, smoothing or retouch, and turn off any filter. Leave HDR on; it evens out the light and changes nothing about your face. Do not use a photo that has been through an editing app afterwards, and do not brighten it.

What you do, in the frame

Look straight at the lens with a neutral expression. Mouth closed, no smile, both eyes open and clearly visible. Head straight rather than tilted, shoulders square to the camera.

Hair clear of the eyes and eyebrows. Glasses off unless your document allows them, and most of the ones in the table do not; where they are allowed, the frame must not cross the eyes and there must be no glare. A head covering worn for religious reasons is allowed almost everywhere, provided the face from the chin to the top of the forehead is clear.

Take several. The one you think is fine on the phone screen sometimes turns out to have a half-closed eye at full size.

Photos for children, and other awkward cases

A baby cannot hold a neutral expression at two metres from a wall, and the rules bend to allow for that: eyes may be partly closed for a newborn, and the mouth may be open. What does not bend is that no other person may appear, which rules out the obvious approach of somebody holding the child. A white sheet on the floor or in a car seat, photographed from directly above, is the usual way round it, and baby passport photos goes through it properly.

Glasses you cannot take off are the other awkward case. Where a document allows them at all, the frame must not cross the eyes and there must be no reflection. Both are solved the same way: turn your head very slightly away from the window so the reflection moves off the lens, then turn it back until you are square to the camera, and take several.

A wheelchair, a head covering or anything else that changes the framing is allowed in every document here as long as the face is clear from the chin to the top of the forehead. Frame on the face, not on the chair.

The crop

The photo out of the phone is the right picture at the wrong size. Every document wants a specific rectangle with the head a specific height inside it, and that is the step a tool is genuinely good at.

Crop from the original file rather than from a print or a screenshot, choose the document you are applying for, and move the crop until the top of the head and the bottom of the chin sit inside the guides. US passport photo requirements covers the 2 x 2 inch case in detail, which is the fiddliest of the lot because the head band is narrow and the shape is square. If the photo is for the online DS-160 form, the file has limits of its own, and DS-160 photo requirements shows how the pixel size and the 240 KB limit fit together and why a file that looks right is sometimes refused.

Printing it

Print the 4 x 6 inch sheet at a kiosk or a photo lab, on photo paper, at 100 percent with no border and no fit to page. Those two settings are the whole problem: left on, they shrink the sheet by two or three millimetres to fit the printer’s margins, and the photo you cut out is the wrong size.

What can still go wrong

Being honest about this matters more than another tip.

A tool can put your photo at the right size with the head in the right band. Whether your expression counts as neutral, whether the light on your face is even enough, whether your glasses glare, whether the wall counts as plain: those are judged at the other end, by a person or a checking system, against the authority’s own standard.

So getPNG crops and places the photo, and tells you which document’s rules it is using and where they come from. It does not judge the biometrics and it cannot promise acceptance, and neither can any other site, whatever the badge on it says.

If the office rejects it, the reason is almost always one of three: a shadow, an uneven face, or a head that is the wrong size in the frame. All three are fixable in ten minutes with a wall, a window and somebody to hold the phone.

The steps, in short

1. Find the wall and the window. A plain wall with no texture, sockets, skirting or picture rail, lit by a window you can face. Daylight on an overcast day is the best light there is for this.
2. Stand a metre away from the wall. Close to the wall and your shadow lands on it, which fails the photo. A metre of space puts the shadow on the floor behind you and out of the frame.
3. Turn off the phone's smoothing. Use the rear camera, switch off portrait mode, beauty, skin smoothing and any filter. Leave HDR on. A phone that smooths skin by default has edited the photo whether you asked it to or not.
4. Have someone shoot from two metres, at eye level. Not at arm's length: the distance distorts the face and the arm shows. Head and shoulders in the frame with space above the head, camera level with your eyes, nothing tilted.
5. Neutral face, eyes open, mouth closed. Look straight at the lens. No smile, no tilt, hair clear of the eyes, glasses off unless your document allows them.
6. Crop it to the size your document asks for. Drop the photo on getPNG's passport photo maker, choose the document, and move the crop until the top of the head and the chin sit inside the guides.
7. Print at 100 percent and measure it. Print the 4 x 6 inch sheet at a kiosk or lab with no border and no fit to page, cut one photo out, and measure it with a ruler before you hand it in.

Questions

Can I take a passport photo myself with a selfie?

It is the one thing not to do. At arm's length the lens is close enough to widen the nose and narrow the ears, which is exactly the distortion a face-matching check is looking for, and your arm or its shadow usually appears in the frame. Ask somebody to hold the phone two metres away, or prop it on a shelf and use the timer.

Which background colour should the wall be?

It depends on the document and it is not always white. The United States and India want white or off-white, the UK wants cream or light grey, and France does not accept white at all. Check the table in the requirements guide before you choose a wall, because repainting is not the fix: standing further from a light wall in even light is.

Is a photo taken at home actually accepted?

In most countries yes, provided it meets the rules; the authorities publish them for exactly this reason and a friend or family member may take it. Canada is the exception among the documents covered here: it accepts photos from a commercial photographer only. Nobody can promise your particular photo will pass, because that judgement is made by the office receiving it.

Do I need a special camera?

No. Any phone from the last several years has far more resolution than a 35 x 45 mm print needs. What matters is the light, the distance and the background, none of which improve with a better camera. The one setting that matters is turning the smoothing off.

Can I use a white sheet instead of a wall?

Yes, if you can get it flat. Hang it over a door or a curtain rail and pull the creases out, because a fold reads as a shadow and a shadow fails the photo. A plain painted wall is easier if you have one.

What is the most common reason a home photo is rejected?

Shadows, either on the wall behind or across one side of the face. Both come from the same two mistakes: standing too close to the wall, and lighting the face from one side only or from a ceiling light. Facing a window with the wall a metre behind you fixes both at once.