US passport photo size: 2×2 inches, and how to print one yourself

The size, in one place

A US passport photo is 2 × 2 inches (51 × 51 mm), and your head must measure between 1 and 1.4 inches (25 to 35 mm) from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head. That head measurement is what most rejected photos get wrong: a selfie held at arm’s length usually puts the head well over 1.4 inches.

The photo must also be in color, taken within the last six months, and shot against a plain white or off-white background with no shadows. Filters and retouching are not allowed. Since 1 November 2016 glasses have to come off, unless you have a signed medical statement explaining why they cannot.

If you print it, use matte or glossy photo paper. A regular sheet of office paper is not accepted.

If you are renewing online

An online renewal takes a digital file instead of a print. It must be a JPG, PNG, HEIC or HEIF between 54 KB and 10 MB.

The State Department does not publish a pixel size for that upload, so there is no number to hit — what matters is that the photo is sharp, unedited and recent. A photo straight from a phone is normally well inside the size range; the usual problem is the opposite one, a file that has been squeezed so hard by a messaging app that it lands under 54 KB or looks blocky.

Getting it onto paper

Two 2 × 2 photos fit on a 4 × 6 inch sheet at home, and six at a lab that prints borderless. Whatever you print on, turn “fit to page” off and choose actual size, or a correct photo becomes the wrong size on paper.

Which file to hand over, and how to cut the sheet, is in Printing passport photos.

What usually gets a photo rejected

1. The head is too large in the frame, or too small — measure chin to crown, not chin to eyes.
2. A shadow falls on the background behind the head, which happens when you stand close to the wall.
3. Hair, a hand or a strap crosses the face or the eyes.
4. The photo is older than six months, or is a photo of an existing print or a screen.
5. The background is a room rather than a plain wall.

Making one in ToolMelo

The photo is cropped and resized in your browser and never uploaded. ToolMelo does not change your background and cannot tell you whether a photo will be accepted — it gets the size, the file and the print sheet right, and the acceptance decision stays with the agency.

1. Open the ID Photo Maker and choose the “US passport 2×2 in · 600×600 px” preset.
2. Use the zoom and position sliders until the head sits in the middle of the frame with a little space above it.
3. If the form you are using caps the file size, enter that KB limit before exporting.
4. For a print, export the 4 × 6 inch sheet PDF and print it at actual size on photo paper.