How to make passport-size photos at home, and print them cheaply
A shop charges for each set of passport photos, and you often need a few sets for different forms. With a phone and a printer, or a 4 × 6 inch print from any photo shop, you can make your own for a few rupees. What decides whether the photo is accepted is the picture you start with, so most of this guide is about that.
Check what is asked first
Before you take anything, read the instructions of the form, the visa page or the notice. Look for the size (for example 35 × 45 mm or 2 × 2 inch), the background colour, how much of the frame the face should fill, whether glasses, caps and smiles are allowed, and for online forms, the file format and size limit.
Offices set their own rules and change them, so what a friend used last year is not a safe guide. This page cannot know them for you.
Take a picture that will not be refused
- Stand about a step in front of a plain, light wall: no pattern, no shadow of your head on it.
- Face a window or the open sky, so the light falls evenly on your face. Avoid a light from one side or from above.
- Have someone hold the phone at eye level, at arm's length or a little more, rather than close up. A close camera widens the nose and the forehead.
- Look straight into the lens, with a neutral face and your mouth closed, ears and forehead visible, and the shoulders level.
- Use the normal camera, in portrait, without beauty filters, and take several pictures.
Cut it to size
Open the Passport photo maker, add the picture, and choose the size. Zoom in until the face fills the frame the way the instructions say, then move the frame so the face is centred. The preview is the real result, so you can see exactly what you will get.
If the form also sets a file-size limit, type it into "Keep the file under". Photos from a phone are several megabytes, and a form limit of 50 or 100 KB is only reached by lowering the quality, which is what this does, and it says so when it cannot reach it.
Print a sheet
Choose a sheet in the options and the page arranges as many copies as fit: eight 35 × 45 mm photos on a 4 × 6 inch sheet, or about thirty on A4. Download the sheet and take it to any photo shop, or print it yourself on glossy photo paper.
At home, print at 100% or "actual size" and turn off "fit to page", or the photos will come out the wrong size. Measure one with a ruler before you cut along the thin grey lines.
Mistakes that get photos refused
- A background that is not plain or not light, or shadows on it.
- A face that is too small in the frame, or too close and distorted.
- Glare on glasses, red eyes, or a face half in shadow.
- A photo that was stretched to fit instead of cut to size.
- A sheet printed with "fit to page", so the photos are a few millimetres off.
- A heavily filtered or edited face. Offices ask for an unedited picture.