Exact official dimensions, verified against the government source below — not copied from another photo site.
SpecShot measures your actual photo against these numbers — head height from your real hairline (not an estimate), eye position, background — and shows you the result before you download. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; it all runs in your browser.
Create my passport photo — freeSource: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/photographic-standards/photo-standards-accessible — verified 2026-09-05
Most failures are created at the moment of capture, not in the crop. Face a window during the day so the light falls evenly on your face, and stand at least an arm’s length in front of a plain wall — close to the wall and your own shadow lands on the background, which counts as a patterned backdrop. Have someone else take the picture from a few steps back rather than shooting at arm’s length: a close-up lens exaggerates the nose and narrows the ears, and that distortion cannot be corrected afterwards.
Look straight into the lens with a neutral expression and your mouth closed, keep your shoulders square to the camera, and push your hair back from the outline of your face. If you wear glasses, check whether this document permits them at all — several authorities now require them removed, and where they are allowed the frames must not cross your eyes and the lenses must not reflect the light.
This specification requires 29–34 mm from the crown to the chin, and it is worth being precise about what that means. The crown is the top of your skull including your hair — not your hairline, and not the top of your forehead. Judged by eye the difference is easy to get wrong by a centimetre or more, which is enough to fail on its own. It is the single most common reason an otherwise good photograph is returned.
For a printed photo, the paper size must come out at exactly 35 × 45 mm. Print at 300 DPI on photo paper, and make sure any “fit to page” or “shrink to fit” option is switched off in the print dialog — that setting silently rescales the image and is a common way a correctly sized file becomes an incorrectly sized print.
For a digital submission, the file needs to be 413 × 531 px as JPEG, with a file size of no fixed limit. If your file is over the limit, compress it rather than reducing the pixel dimensions — the dimensions are themselves part of the requirement.
These numbers were taken from the official source linked above and checked against it. Requirements do change, so treat that source as the final authority, and tell us if anything here has drifted out of date. SpecShot is not affiliated with any government, embassy or visa service, and cannot guarantee acceptance — the issuing authority always makes the final decision on whether a photograph meets its standard.