How the measurements on this site are researched

Passport photo specifications look like the kind of thing that should be easy to look up, and they are not. The same country will have one size published by its domestic passport office and a different one applied by its consulates abroad. Head-height ranges get quoted in millimetres by one authority and as a percentage of the frame by another. Half the aggregator sites on the web copy each other rather than the government, so a figure can be repeated a hundred times and still be wrong. A tool that crops to the wrong number is worse than no tool at all, because it hands you a confident, precisely-sized mistake.

So the research rules below are the actual working method behind this site, not a statement of intent. They are written down here so you can judge how much to trust any given page.

1. The issuing authority comes first

A specification is only treated as verified when it can be read on the website of the body that actually issues the document, or in a document that body publishes. For the countries currently on this site that has meant, among others:

• United States — travel.state.gov's photo requirements, plus the photo instructions attached to the relevant USCIS form for immigration photos.
• United Kingdom — HM Passport Office's published digital and printed photo rules on GOV.UK.
• Schengen visas — the German Foreign Office's Schengen visa checklist (the Merkblatt published across the diplo.de embassy network) and the biometric photo standard it defers to for detailed measurements.
• Italy — the passport photo pages published nationwide across questure.poliziadistato.it by the provincial police headquarters, which give the domestic "formato tessera" size and the 70–80% chin-to-forehead face coverage rule.
• India — Passport Seva's own application guidance, read alongside first-hand familiarity with the PSK appointment process.

Each entry in the site's data file carries a dated comment naming the document the figure came from and, where the wording matters, quoting the relevant line in the original language. That comment is what gets re-read when something is challenged.

2. When there is no readable primary source, the page says so

Plenty of passport authorities simply do not publish a photo specification page that a member of the public can read. Some route everything through an authenticated application portal. Some put the numbers inside a scanned PDF that cannot be parsed as text. Some publish them only on a counter printout at a physical office.

In those cases the honest options are to omit the country entirely or to publish the best available third-party consensus with a clear warning attached. This site takes the second option, and the warning is not buried: it appears as its own heading on the page, above the fold of the written content, in plain language. The Kenya page, for example, states outright that the Directorate of Immigration Services does not publish a dedicated specification page, that applications route through an authenticated eCitizen session, and that the figures shown are cross-checked third-party consensus which should be confirmed against the portal or a Huduma Centre before submitting. The OCI, PAN and MyKad pages carry equivalent disclosures.

If you only remember one thing from this page: a country page with a "note on source confidence" heading is telling you something real, and it is worth reading before you print.

3. Disagreements get shown, not resolved silently

Sources contradict each other more often than you would hope, usually on background colour and usually between "white" and "light grey". The temptation is to pick one and present it with confidence. This site does not do that. Where two credible readings exist, both are named on the page and the underlying rule they agree on — plain, unpatterned, evenly lit, no shadow behind the subject — is stated as the thing that actually matters. The cropper flags these cases in the interface too, rather than quietly compositing a background colour that one of the two sources would reject.

The same applies to genuine size disputes. Italy is the clearest example on the site: the domestic Questura text gives "35–40 mm", while a large number of third-party sites repeat 35×45mm, which appears to describe the Schengen-style size some Italian consulates abroad apply instead. The page uses the primary-sourced domestic figure, explains the discrepancy, and tells anyone applying through a consulate to confirm which size that office wants. Flattening that into a single number would be tidier and less useful.

4. Derived figures are labelled as derived

The crop guide needs more numbers than most authorities publish. To draw an accurate overlay the tool needs a chin-to-crown head height range and a crown position — how far below the top edge the top of the head should sit. Many specifications give the first and not the second, or give a percentage where millimetres are needed.

Where a value has to be derived, it is derived from that country's own published figures wherever possible — Italy's 28–32mm head height, for instance, is calculated as 70–80% of its own 40mm frame height, not borrowed from a country with a 45mm frame. Where a value has to be calibrated against a comparable country, the source note says which country and why the comparison holds. Nothing is invented to fill a gap: when an authority publishes no DPI minimum or no file-size cap, the field is left empty rather than populated with a plausible-looking guess.

5. What this site will not do to your photo

Editorial policy is usually about words. Here it also has to cover pixels, because the most consequential thing a passport photo tool can get wrong is not a sentence — it is altering an image in a way that gets the application rejected.

• No AI face retouching. No skin smoothing, no blemish removal, no "enhance". HM Passport Office explicitly rejects photos altered beyond a basic crop, and other authorities are moving the same way.
• No generated backgrounds. The optional background removal replaces the backdrop with a flat colour. It does not generate, hallucinate or paint in new scenery, and it does not touch your face. If it fails on a difficult photo it says so and leaves the original alone rather than producing something plausible and wrong.
• No automated pass/fail verdict. Several competing tools display a green tick implying government approval. No third-party tool can actually know that. This one shows you the published rule and the crop guide, and leaves the verdict to the office processing your application.

6. Corrections

Specifications change and this site will sometimes be out of date. When an error is reported or found, the fix is made to the underlying data, the dated source note is rewritten to reflect the new source, and every page that reads from that entry updates at the next build — which keeps the country page, the crop guide, the FAQ and the comparison tables from drifting apart.

If a correction changes a figure that people may have already printed against, the page says what changed rather than quietly swapping the number. Reports can go to the contact page; a link to the issuing authority's own page makes them much faster to act on.

7. Who writes this, and how it is funded

PassportCrop is written and maintained by Saurabh Sharma, working alone. There is no editorial team, no contributor network and no syndicated content. More background is on the about page.

The tool is free and has no paid tier, no account system and no upsell. The site carries advertising, and advertising has no influence on which countries are covered, what the pages say, or which figures appear — there is no advertiser in the passport photo business whose product this site recommends, and no affiliate links to photo studios, printing services or visa agents. Where a page suggests printing somewhere, it names the type of place rather than a brand that pays for the mention.

I am not a photographer, an immigration adviser or a lawyer, and this site is not legal advice. What I do is read the primary source, record exactly what it says, flag it when I can't, and build a crop guide that matches.