Should your CV even have a photo? Depends where you're applying.

US, UK, Canada, Ireland: leave it off. A photo isn't required, and including one can trigger anti-discrimination concerns that get an otherwise strong resume screened out automatically at some companies. Many applicant-tracking systems in these countries are set up to evaluate candidates without a photo at all.

Germany and Austria: a professional headshot (Bewerbungsfoto) on the Lebenslauf is near-mandatory, placed at the top right of the first page. A CV without one can read as unfinished to a German recruiter.

France, Spain, Italy, and much of Asia and the Middle East: commonly included, though the practice is weakening, especially at younger, international, or tech-sector companies. When in doubt, check what similar candidates in your target market are doing.

A multinational company's own internal hiring policy can override local convention entirely, so when your target employer is headquartered elsewhere, its own norms may matter more than the country you're applying from. And if you're weighing "should I put a picture on my resume" purely on merit rather than geography, the short version is that a photo rarely helps in a resume-first market and rarely hurts in a CV-first one, so it usually comes down to local custom rather than personal preference.

There's no government body setting CV photo rules, but where a photo is expected, the de facto European standard is 35x45mm, a plain light grey or neutral background (the exact shade varies a little by country), and a shoulders-up crop with your head filling roughly 70-80% of the frame. Upload a clear, front-facing photo to the tool above, align it, and download, right in your browser, with nothing uploaded to a server.

This same 35x45mm ratio shows up under a lot of different search terms, a "CV photo," "photo CV," "curriculum vitae picture," or simply "photo in CV," but it's the same shape underneath: a portrait rectangle rather than a square LinkedIn-style crop or a wide landscape shot. If a job posting or a recruiter asks for a "CV pic" without giving you exact numbers, this convention is a safe default to fall back on.

You don't need a studio or a professional photographer for this. Stand or sit facing a window so natural daylight falls evenly across your face, rather than shooting with a bright window or lamp behind you, which throws your face into shadow. A plain wall, a folded blanket pinned up behind you, or even a tidy corner of a room all work fine as a background, the goal is just to avoid clutter, patterns, or anything that pulls attention away from your face.

Dress the way you'd dress for the interview itself, keep your expression natural and approachable rather than stiff, and hold the camera at roughly eye level instead of shooting up from below or down from above, both of which distort your features. A phone camera on a normal lens is genuinely fine for this, you don't need a DSLR or a hired photographer to get a usable CV photo. Once you've got a sharp, well-lit shot, upload it to the tool above, align your head to the guide, and export a clean 35x45mm crop with a professional-looking background in under a minute.

Search around for "background for resume" or "background cv" and you'll find a lot of opinions, but the convention that actually holds up across most European CV guides is simple: plain and light. A neutral grey, a soft off-white, or a light blue-grey all read as professional, while a busy background image, a real-world photo behind you, or a strong colour pulls focus away from your face and can look unpolished next to the rest of your CV's formatting.

Expression matters just as much as background. A relaxed, natural half-smile with your shoulders square to the camera reads as approachable without looking too casual. Avoid a full grin, a side-angle "profile picture" style shot, or sunglasses, none of these fit the professional-document context a CV photo is meant for, even in countries where including one is completely normal.

A lot of the confusion around this topic actually comes down to which word someone grew up using. In the US and Canada, "resume" is the standard term, and the no-photo norm goes with it. Almost everywhere else, "CV" (curriculum vitae) is the more common word, and in large parts of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, a photo tends to be expected alongside it. So when you search "CV photo" versus "resume photo," you're often really asking two different regional questions, even though the documents themselves serve the same purpose.

If you're applying to a US-headquartered company from outside the US, lean toward the company's own norm rather than your country's, since a lot of multinational recruiters default to a no-photo policy globally to keep hiring consistent across offices. If you're genuinely unsure, it rarely hurts to check the job posting itself or a couple of recent hires' public profiles from that same company before deciding either way.

This tool works as a straightforward CV photo maker: pick a photo, align your head to the 35x45mm guide, and download. It runs entirely in your browser, so your photo is never sent to a server, there's nothing to sign up for and no watermark on the result. If a different shape is what you actually need, this site also has a preset for a LinkedIn profile photo (square) and a student ID photo (portrait ID style), both free and processed the same way, in your browser.