Print Passport Photos at Home

You can print passport photos at home when the office that receives them allows it, and the rules differ more than people expect: the U.S. State Department lets a friend or family member take the photo and asks for photo-quality paper, while the UK, Australian and Canadian passport offices want professional prints. If yours allows it, the job is to crop the photo to the exact size, lay out copies on one sheet, print at 100 percent and measure a copy with a ruler before you cut.

2x2 inch photos on one Letter sheet

15

2x2 inch photos on 4x6 paper

2

35x45 mm photos on one A4 sheet

30

documents compared below

6

Check Whether a Home Print Is Allowed

Start here, before you take a single picture. Same size does not mean same rules: three of the documents below use 35 x 45 mm, and only one of them leaves home printing open.

Two more things change the answer. Online applications, such as U.S. online renewal or a UK online application, take a digital photo, so nothing is printed at all. And rules change: open the source for your own document on the day you print, because this table is only as current as its check date.

Can You Take Your Own Passport Photo

For a U.S. passport the State Department page says a friend or family member may take the photo. Head size, background and a recent date still apply: the head must measure 1 to 1 3/8 inches (25 to 35 mm) from chin to top, the background must be plain white or off-white, eyeglasses come off, and the photo must be from the last 6 months. The U.S. passport photo page lists all of it with the source.

In practice a second person helps more than any app. A selfie at arm's length tends to make the nose look bigger and the ears smaller, and the head usually ends up tilted. Ask someone to stand a few steps away with the phone at your eye level, face a window rather than standing with it behind you, and use a plain wall. Take several frames and pick the one with both eyes open and no shadow behind you.

Lay Out the Sheet

Printing one 2 x 2 inch photo on a whole sheet wastes paper, so a sheet of copies is the usual way. The table shows how many copies fit with a 5 mm margin and 3 mm between photos, the layout used both by the ID photo maker here and by Paperlark's ID photo sheets.

4x6 inch photo paper uses the least paper for one or two U.S. passport photos: a single sheet carries two copies and fits the photo tray. A Letter sheet of 15 makes sense for a family applying together. For 35 x 45 mm, the tool turns a Letter sheet to landscape to fit 28 copies.

Make the Sheet in the Browser

The ID photo maker works on an iPhone or a computer, keeps the photo on the device and makes a PDF. It has presets for the 2 x 2 inch U.S. photo, the 33 x 48 mm China visa photo and 35 x 45 mm.

1. Choose the size and paper

   Pick the photo size, then Letter, A4, 4 x 6 in or 5 x 7 in paper.

2. Pick the photo

   JPEG, PNG or WebP. In Safari on an iPhone you can choose straight from your photo library.

3. Fit the head

   Drag the photo and use Zoom. For 2 x 2 in and 33 x 48 mm two ovals show the smallest and largest head height the official rules allow.

4. Create the PDF

   The tool repeats the photo across the sheet. In our test a 2 x 2 inch sheet on Letter took about 1.5 seconds and came out as a single page of 42 KB with 15 copies.

We measured what the tool writes into those files. The Letter page is 215.9 x 279.4 mm and every 2 x 2 inch copy is drawn at 144 x 144 points, which is 50.8 x 50.8 mm. A 35 x 45 mm copy is drawn at 35.0 x 45.0 mm. Whatever comes out wrong on paper after that is down to print settings, which is why the next step matters.

Print at Actual Size and Measure

• Print the PDF with the scale at 100 percent, also called Actual size. Turn off Fit to page and anything named Scale to fit: they shrink the sheet a few percent and every photo with it.
• Choose the paper size in the print screen that matches the paper in the tray, and photo paper as the paper type if the printer offers it.
• For the U.S. use matte or glossy photo-quality paper. For a China visa use glossy photo paper; matte or plain paper is not accepted.
• Do not edit the photo after you crop it. The State Department asks for the original photo without filters or digital changes.
• Before you cut, put a ruler across one copy. A 2 x 2 inch photo should measure 2 inches, 50.8 mm, on each side, and 35 x 45 mm should measure exactly that. Then measure the head from chin to top against the limit for your document.

If the copy measures short, the scale was not 100 percent, or the printer was set to a different paper than the one loaded. Fix the setting and print again rather than cutting a larger border.

Cut the Photos

Thin cut lines run between the copies. A paper trimmer or a metal ruler and a sharp craft knife give straighter edges than scissors. Cut the long lines across the whole sheet first, then the short ones, and keep your fingers off the face. A copy that ends up a millimeter short on one side is a reason to cut a fresh one from the same sheet.

In the Paperlark App

Paperlark has the same seven sizes as the tool: 35 x 45 mm, 2 x 2 in, 30 x 40, 33 x 48, 50 x 70, 40 x 60 and 25 x 35 mm, repeated on the sheet with cut lines. It crops the photo from the center to the chosen size, without a frame to drag, and sends the sheet straight to an AirPrint printer instead of making a PDF first. ID photo sheets are part of Pro; the preview is free. The app is still in App Store review.

Printing ordinary photos as well? The 4x6 photo preset and the guide on how to print from an iPhone cover the rest.