Use this Checklist to find if your photo is a good one for Passport
Photo Quality Requirement Checklist: (Take enough photos to find the best one satisfying the requirement)
Eyes open and clearly visible (with no sunglasses or heavily tinted glasses, and no hair across your eyes). If wear glasses, the frames should not cover your eyes;
No
hats or caps or hair across your face;
Facing forwards, looking straight towards the camera;
(Tips: Use the photo editor software to do necessary adjustment);
shadows in background or cross face. If wear glasses, No glare on glasses; Tips: If use flash, use flash diffuser or bounce mode flash. Don't have diffuser? Not a problem. Try DIY one. It's simple, can be a milk bottle, a BBQ bag or something you can think. Look At Here. Is it simple?
No
brand label on your clothes showing in the photo;
For the digital format of US Nonimmigrant VISA photo, there are extra requirements for the digital image itself:
Image Requirements - Technical Specifications
Our Comment
Acquisition
The image file may be produced by acquiring an image with a digital camera or by digitizing a paper photograph with a scanner.
Most likely people will use a digital camera instead of a film camera today. It's easier to start from the digital image file directly instead of a scanned photo. Recommended Method.
BE CAREFUL with scanned photo: If the photo to scan is from a printout of a digital camera photo, it may NOT satisfy the requirement even you scan at super high resolution. It's because the original digital photo itself may NOT have enough resolution! We DO NOT recommend this method.
Dimensions
Image pixel dimensions must be in a square aspect ratio (meaning the height must be equal to the width). Minimum acceptable dimensions are 600 pixels (width) — 600 pixels (height). Maximum acceptable dimensions are 1200 pixels (width) — 1200 pixels (height).
Normally, the digital photo directly from camera does NOT satisfy this requirement. Since the normal photo size is not square and resolution is much higher than this. This is where our software can help. It's much easier to use our software to do this.
Be Careful! If you crop the photo to this size using genearal image processing tool (MSpaint, photoviewer, photoshop,etc), you can easily get a square size photo with the required pixel size. However, most likely, it will fail the POSITION STANDARD (EYE HEIGHT, HEAD Size, etc).
Color
Must be in color (24 bits per pixel ) in sRGB color space (common output of most digital cameras).
Most digital cameras do satisfy this.
File Format
Must be in the Joint Photographic Experts Group ( JPEG ) file interchange format (JFIF).
Be Careful! Most digital camera photos DO NOT satisfy this! Since the same file extension (*.jpg) doesn't mean it's in JFIF format. Most cameras generate JPEG file but in EXIF format which has extra information about the camera used to take the picture and date, etc information.
This is a JPEG (JFIF) file size of 600x600pixels with 100% quality (NO COMPRESSION).
Compression
The image may need to be compressed in order for it to be under the maximum file size. The compression ratio used should be less than or equal to 20:1.
You can get a 240kB file with much higher resolution than 600x600. However, it's compressed image (LOSS COMPRESSION). So, it has to be within 20:1 ratio. Otherwise, your photo will fail. Do you know how much your photo's compression ratio is? If answer is no, it's better to use our software!
