Passport Photo Maker

1. 1Add a portrait taken against a plain background.
2. 2Choose the country or size you need.
3. 3Use the zoom and the up-and-down control to place the head correctly.
4. 4Download the JPG and take it to any print shop.

Each preset is the published size in millimetres, rendered at 300 dots per inch — the density print shops expect. A 35 × 45 mm photo therefore comes out at 413 × 531 pixels, which is what makes it print at the right physical size rather than merely looking right on screen.

The picture is scaled to fill the frame and then centred, with a control to nudge it up or down. Head placement is the most common reason an application is rejected, and it is the part a crop can actually fix.

What software cannot do is judge the rest of the rules: background colour, expression, glasses, head coverings, how much of the frame the head must occupy, and how recent the photograph must be. Those vary by country and change from time to time, so read the requirements published by whoever is receiving it.

Images are decoded by the browser, redrawn on a canvas and re-encoded on your own machine. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no waiting on a queue and no copy of your photos anywhere else.

• Read the official rules for your application before taking the photo: size, background colour, head size and how recent it must be.
• Stand half a metre in front of a plain light wall and face a window, so there are no shadows on your face or behind your head.
• Have someone else take the picture from about 1–1.5 metres away; selfies distort faces.
• Do not use filters, smoothing or background replacement. Edited photos are rejected.

• How to make a passport photo at home
• How to resize a photo to exact pixels and a file size limit in KB