How the passport photo checks work

By Passport Photo at Home · Updated October 31, 2026

What happens to your photo, step by step

1. The photo opens in your browser. For a JPEG file, the tool also reads three things from the file's data when they're there: the date the photo was taken, its orientation, and the name of the app that saved it.
2. Face detection. Google's open-source MediaPipe Face Landmarker looks for up to two faces and places 478 points on the largest one. It also gives scores for blinking, an open jaw and smiling. If the face is sideways or upside down, the tool turns the photo and tries again. If no face is found, it looks again in the upper middle of the photo for a small face.
3. Person outline. MediaPipe's selfie segmenter separates you from the background. That outline gives the top of your hair and the background area to check. If the outline can't show the top of the head, the tool estimates it from the face and marks “Top of head” as Check.
4. Crop. If the eyes are tilted between 1.5° and 15°, the tool first turns the whole photo to level them, crops it to the largest rectangle of the same shape inside, and detects the face again. It keeps the straightened version only if the eyes come out more level and the framing doesn't get worse, and says so, for example “We straightened your photo (6°).” Then it crops the photo to the document's size, with the head in the middle of the allowed range and, for US documents, the eyes in the middle of their band. On the passport photo checker, a photo that already has the document's shape is measured as it is instead.
5. Checks. Each check shows Good, Check or Retake, or We can fix when Fix it for me can repair it. Tap a check to read what it found. The verdict is “Needs a retake” when something needs a new photo, and names it, such as “Uneven light on your face.” It's “Almost ready” when the tool can fix the rest, such as “We can fix the shadow on the wall for you.”, or when something only needs a look, such as “One thing to check: glasses.” When everything is Good, it says “Ready”.
6. How to fix. When the tool can fix the rest, the fix button sits right under the verdict: Whiten the background (Fix the background for documents that want a light color), Fix the crop, or Fix it for me when it can do both. A fix that edits the photo comes with a note saying so. When something else needs a new photo, a card names the one thing to fix first, with a small drawing and one line: which way to turn or straighten your head, from the angle it measured; how much farther back to stand or which way to aim the camera, from the room missing at each edge; or where to stand for the wall. Retake becomes the main button, because fixing the rest wouldn't save that photo, and How to retake lists the steps for each problem.

If face detection can't load or can't find the face, you can tap the chin and the top of the head yourself. Size, background and focus are still checked; eyes, expression and light show as Not checked.

Every automatic check, with its threshold

Thresholds are the exact numbers the tool uses. Brightness is on a scale of 0 (black) to 255 (white). A Retake that Fix it for me can repair, such as the background or the crop, shows as We can fix.

• One person. Counts the faces. Good: exactly one. Retake: two or more.
• Head straight. Angle of the line between the centers of the eyes, after any straightening. Good: up to 5°. Check: up to 8°. Retake: more.
• Facing the camera. How far the nose sits from the middle of the face, measured along the line between the cheeks so a tilted head doesn't count, then turned into an angle. MediaPipe's own head pose (its face transformation matrix) gives a second reading. Good: up to 5°, the limit for a frontal face photo in the international standard ISO/IEC 19794-5. Good with a quiet note (“Turned slightly”): up to 7°, but only when MediaPipe's own head pose also reads 6° or less. Retake: more than 7°, more than 5° when the head pose disagrees, or a head pose above 8° on its own.
• Head level. Where the tip of the nose sits between the eye line (0) and the mouth (1): about 0.57 to 0.60 for an adult looking straight ahead, higher when the chin drops, lower when it tips up or the camera is below the face. Retake: a reading below 0.4 or above 0.82, a chin tipped far up or down. Check: when that reading and the head pose's pitch both lean the same way, or when the photo moved more than 0.08 from the live guide's reading of the same face a moment before.
• Eyes open. MediaPipe's blink score for each eye, from 0 to 1. Good: below 0.45. Retake: otherwise. With Baby photo on, Retake becomes Check where the document's rules allow it.
• Mouth closed. The gap between the inner lips measured against the lips' own height, so full lips that meet don't read as open, a look for teeth between the lips, and MediaPipe's jaw-open score. Retake: a jaw-open score above 0.25, teeth filling more than 15% of the space between the lips, a gap wider than 30% of the lips' own height, or wider than 20% with teeth in more than 8% of it. Check: lips that read as closed with a sliver of teeth (more than 3%) between them.
• Expression. The smile score, for documents that need a neutral face. Check: above 0.35. US passport photos allow a natural smile, so this is always Good for them.
• Head size. Chin to top of head in the cropped photo. Good: inside the document's range. Retake: outside it.
• Eye height. Eyes above the bottom edge, for US documents. Good: inside the range. Retake: outside it.
• Top of head visible. Space between the top of the hair and the top edge. Retake: less than 0.5 mm at print size. China uses its 3–5 mm rule instead.
• Room around you. Whether the crop fits inside your original photo. Retake: the crop runs more than 0.5 mm past any edge. We can fix: when the head and hair are whole in the photo, one tap adds plain margin in the wall's own color at the sides or above the head, at most 25% of the crop on a side and nothing below the chin. That's an edit, and the result says so.
• Resolution. Pixels in the crop. Printed photos: Good at 250 dpi or more, Check from 180 dpi, Retake below. Uploads: Good at the form's minimum, Check down to 75% of it, Retake below. OCI card: Good at 600 px, more than the portal's 200 px minimum, because the same photo is also printed at 2 × 2 in. India visa: Good at 600 px, the size of the file the tool saves, which is more than the form's 350 px minimum.
• Background. Brightness, color and evenness of the background inside the crop, leaving you out. The smooth way light falls off across a plain wall is measured and set aside first, so a wall that is only darker on one side isn't read as two tones. Good: brightness of at least 190 (170 for light-colored backgrounds), little color, and even. Retake: your shadow on the wall, objects or edges on it (a frame, a shelf, a door edge, a corner), or much too dark, tinted or uneven. Check: light that falls off steeply across the wall, smaller misses, too little background to judge, or, for an OCI card photo, a background bright enough to look white (244 or more), because the OCI portal's FAQ asks for a light color that isn't white (VFS Global's photo specifications also allow white; light gray meets both). A plain wall that only came out gray gets a tip on lighting it.
• Even light on face. Brightness of three spots on each cheek, the darker side compared with the brighter side. Good: 75% or more. Check: 50–74%. Retake: below 50%.
• Brightness. How much of the face is washed out or nearly black, how dark the face is in the photo as taken, and whether the light is behind you. Retake: a face too dark to recover, with a median brightness under 30, or under 50 when the wall is darker than 120 too. Check: 25% or more of the face washed out, 40% or more nearly black, or the face far darker than a bright background, as when the light is behind you.
• Sharp focus. Edge contrast on the face (the variance of the Laplacian on a 160×160 copy). Good: 40 or more. Check: less.

To find your shadow, the tool compares the wall in a band just outside your outline on each side, from 2% to 8% of the photo's width away from your head and shoulders, with the wall's median brightness. It's Retake, or We can fix where Fix it for me is offered, with “Your shadow falls on the wall next to your head. Step 2–3 feet away from the wall and face a window.”, when one side's band is at least 25% darker than the median and darker than the other side by at least 20% of the median.

After that, a background has “two tones” when edges cross more than 30% of it and the median brightness of its top 30% differs from the rest by more than 30, or its left half differs from its right half by more than 30. A wall edge, a corner and a shadow behind the head all do that. Objects on the wall count when they cover more than 2% of it.

Checks that appear only when they apply

• No glasses: Retake on US photos when the tool finds a dark frame bridge between the eyes together with a rim under an eye; Check for bright glare around an eye, or for frames on other documents. For documents that allow glasses, such as China, Schengen and Canada visas, it only looks for glare.
• No red eyes: Check when a quarter or more of a pupil is red.
• Color photo: Retake when the face has almost no color, as in a black-and-white photo: on average, a pixel's red, green and blue values differ by less than 6. US passport and visa photos must be in color. Canada visa photos may be black and white, so this check is off for them.
• Recent photo: Check when a JPEG's date shows it's older than the document allows: 6 months for US documents, 1 month for a UK passport. It's left out for an India visa, whose rules give no limit. A camera photo shows “Taken just now.”
• No edits: Check when the file says it was saved by a known editing app, such as Snapseed, Facetune, Lightroom or Photoshop.
• Top of head: Check when the top of the head had to be estimated.
• Photo shape: on the checker, when a photo is measured as it is, Retake if its shape doesn't match the document's.
• Brightness evened out, Color corrected, Background extended or Background replaced: always Edited. When a plain neutral wall came out gray, the tool brightens and white-balances the whole photo by itself (never for the DV lottery); the other three follow a tap. The result then says what was fixed, such as “We fixed 2 things”, never Ready, and Undo takes the fixes off.

Fix it for me (labeled Whiten the background or Fix the crop when it does one thing) shows up when the Background check flags the wall or when a better crop would fix the framing. For the background, it first sets one white balance and brightness for the whole photo from the lit half of the wall around you, aiming for near-white (245 for white-background documents, 232 for light ones) and capped so the brighter cheek stays at 215 or below. If the wall still fails, it replaces the background with the document's first suggested color, white for US, China, India and Canada and light gray for the UK and Schengen, using the person outline. For the crop, it can also add plain margin in the wall's color when the photo is a little too tight. All of these are edits, and an edited photo can be rejected, so the result says so and suggests retaking in front of a plain wall. They're never offered for the DV lottery, and switching to it removes any fix already made; there, the result explains how to retake instead.

The targets for each document

The numbers come from each document's official rules. The last figure is the crop height the Resolution check needs for OK.

• US passport: head 1–1⅜ in; eyes 1⅛–1⅜ in above the bottom edge; white or off-white background; 500 px tall (250 dpi at 2×2 in).
• US online renewal: head 1–1⅜ in; eyes 1⅛–1⅜ in above the bottom edge; white or off-white background; 600 px tall.
• US visa (DS-160): head 1–1⅜ in; eyes 1⅛–1⅜ in above the bottom edge; white or off-white background; 600 px tall.
• DV lottery: head 1–1⅜ in; eyes 1⅛–1⅜ in above the bottom edge; white or off-white background; 600 px tall.
• Green card / immigrant visa: head 1–1⅜ in; eyes 1⅛–1⅜ in above the bottom edge; white or off-white background; 500 px tall (250 dpi at 2×2 in).
• China visa: head 28–33 mm; 3–5 mm of space above the head; plain white background; 472 px tall.
• Schengen visa: head 32–36 mm; top of the head inside the photo; plain, light-colored background; 443 px tall (250 dpi at 35×45 mm).
• UK passport: head 29–34 mm; top of the head inside the photo; plain, light-colored background; 750 px tall.
• India passport: head 36–38.25 mm; top of the head inside the photo; plain white background; 810 px tall.
• OCI card: head 25–35 mm; top of the head inside the photo; plain, light-colored (white gets a Check) background; 600 px tall.
• India visa: head 25–35 mm; top of the head inside the photo; plain white background; 600 px tall.
• Canada visa: head 31–36 mm; top of the head inside the photo; plain, light-colored background; 443 px tall (250 dpi at 35×45 mm).
• Spain DNI / passport: head 22.4–25.6 mm (the ICAO proportion, because Spain publishes no head size); top of the head inside the photo; plain white background; 315 px tall (250 dpi at 32×26 mm).
• Mexico tamaño infantil: head 21–24 mm (the ICAO proportion, because Spain publishes no head size); top of the head inside the photo; plain white background; 296 px tall (250 dpi at 25×30 mm).

US visa and DV rules give the head and eyes as a share of the image height: 50–69% and 56–69%. The tool measures them with the same proportions as a 2×2 inch photo, where 1 to 1 3/8 inches is 50–69%. For online renewal, the State Department lists no pixel size or head size, so the tool uses the printed photo's proportions and a 600 px minimum.

What the checks can't see

• Most filters, retouching and edits. Beauty modes, skin smoothing, portrait blur and a swapped background usually leave no trace the tool can read, so an edited photo can pass every check. No edits appears only when the file names an editing app. The State Department checks every photo for digital changes.
• Some glasses. Rimless or thin frames without glare can go unnoticed, and glare alone only gets a Check.
• Hats, head coverings, uniforms, headphones and masks. Not checked. Look for them yourself.
• Hands and hair. The one-person check counts faces, so a hand at the edge of the frame isn't flagged. Hair over the eyes isn't checked directly.
• The photo's age without a date. PNG and HEIC files, screenshots and copies sent through chat apps usually carry no date the tool can read, and a date in a file can be wrong.
• Skin tone accuracy. The background's color is checked; skin color isn't.
• The print. Paper, printed size, printer dots, creases and smudges happen after the file leaves the tool. Measure the print with a ruler.
• Signed statements and the final decision. The tool can't know about a doctor's note or a religious statement, and it doesn't approve photos. The agency reviewing your application does.

Test results with ten test photos

On September 25, 2026, we chose ten test photos in this site's tool, set to a US passport photo, in desktop Chrome. We don't publish the test photos themselves. The results are quoted word for word.

Four photos rated Ready

Test photo: Plain white wall, even light, neutral face.

What the checker said: “Ready. Nothing to fix. Save it below.”

All 15 checks passed, including head size (1.26 in), eye height (1.19 in) and resolution (551 dpi at 2×2 in).

Test photo: Light blue top against a white wall, hair clear of the eyes.

What the checker said: “Ready. Nothing to fix. Save it below.”

All 15 checks passed: head size 1.26 in, eye height 1.19 in, 575 dpi.

Test photo: A natural smile with the mouth closed.

What the checker said: “Ready. Nothing to fix. Save it below.”

All 15 checks passed: head size 1.19 in, eye height 1.19 in, 552 dpi.

Test photo: A plain, one-color head covering with the full face visible.

What the checker said: “Ready. Nothing to fix. Save it below.”

All 15 checks passed: head size 1.22 in, eye height 1.31 in, 604 dpi. No check looks at head coverings, so the signed statement is up to you.

The head covering got Ready too, because no check looks at coverings. That's a limit in action: a photo can pass every automatic check and still break a rule, here if the signed statement is missing.

A baby photo with one Check

Test photo: A baby lying on a white sheet, photographed from above.

What the checker said: “Almost ready. One thing to check: uneven light on your face.”

• Even light on face: Check. “One side of the face is darker. Face a window or lamp directly.”

The other 14 checks passed. The tool straightened the photo 2° first. Checked on the baby photo page with Baby photo on.

The fix: Turn the sheet so the top of the baby's head points at the window, and keep your body out of the light.

Same photo, two results

The first test photo is a square file. On the checker, a square photo is measured exactly as it is, and there it got “Almost ready. We can fix the crop for you.” with “Eye height: We can fix. Eyes 1.06 in above the bottom edge. Needs 1⅛–1⅜ in. Tap Crop it for me under the photo.” Fix it for me re-crops it and it's ready. On the passport photo maker, the same file is cropped for you, the eyes land at 1.19 in, and it's ready. The photo is fine; its framing wasn't.

All ten test photos

• Man, white wall: Ready.
• Woman, light blue top: Ready.
• Woman, closed-mouth smile: Ready.
• Woman, head covering: Ready.
• Baby on a white sheet: Almost ready, 1 Check (Even light on face), after straightening 2°.
• Shadow behind the head: Needs a retake (Even light on face); We can fix the background.
• Gray wall with a corner: Needs a retake (Even light on face); We can fix the background.
• Tilted head, teeth showing: Needs a retake (Head straight, Mouth closed) and 1 Check (Even light on face).
• Glasses with glare: Almost ready, 1 Check (No glasses). Since October 12, frames on a US photo are a Retake, and a smaller copy of this photo now gets “No glasses: Retake” on our test bench.
• Baby, too close, living room: Needs a retake (Mouth closed, Room around you); We can fix the background; 1 Check (Top of head), after straightening 6°.

Drawings of each problem, with what the checker says and the fix, are on the passport photo rejected page.

Your photo stays on your device

All of this runs in your browser. The page downloads the MediaPipe model files from this site and keeps them in your browser's cache storage for the next visit; your photo never goes the other way. Detecting the face, cropping, checking and building the files you save all happen on your phone or computer.

While the tab is open, the last cropped photo is kept in the browser's session storage so you can save it again after a reload. It's gone when you close the tab. To learn which checks fail most, the page sends anonymous counts of events, such as the name of a failed check and the kind of browser. They never include the photo or the face points; a few carry one rounded reading, such as how far the head was turned or how bright the wall was. The privacy policy has the details.

Where the rules come from

Each document's rules come from its official page. We compare the tool with these pages and show the date of the last check:

• US passport: checked September 25, 2026
• US online renewal: checked October 9, 2026
• US visa (DS-160), DV lottery, Green card / immigrant visa: checked October 9, 2026
• China visa: checked September 25, 2026
• Schengen visa: checked September 25, 2026
• UK passport: checked September 25, 2026
• India passport: checked October 9, 2026
• OCI card: checked October 21, 2026
• India visa: checked October 18, 2026
• Canada visa: checked October 18, 2026
• Spain DNI / passport: checked October 25, 2026
• Mexico tamaño infantil: checked October 31, 2026

If an official page says something different from this site, follow the official page.

How we read store prices and fees

Every price on this site was read on the company's own website, and each one shows that site and the date. These are the store pages and the reading behind each:

• Walmart: photo service photos3.walmart.com, read Oct 7, 2026; 4×6 print photos3.walmart.com, read Oct 7, 2026
• USPS (Post Office): photo service usps.com, read Oct 7, 2026
• Walgreens: photo service photo.walgreens.com, read Oct 7, 2026; 4×6 print photo.walgreens.com, read Oct 7, 2026
• CVS: photo service cvs.com, read Oct 7, 2026; 4×6 print cvs.com, read Oct 7, 2026

We note the price, what's included, the digital copy and what the page says about appointments. When a company publishes no price, the site says "Not published; call your store" and never estimates one. We don't copy prices from other sites, no store pays to be listed, and none of our links are affiliate links. Passport fees come from the State Department's fee page, read on the Wayback Machine's copy because travel.state.gov blocks automated reading (web.archive.org (travel.state.gov), archived Jul 2, 2026, read Oct 19, 2026). Online photo services were read on their own sites on October 19, 2026. All of them are side by side on the passport photo cost page.

We don't test prints at stores. The 4×6 sheet and the Letter PDF are laid out in code at 300 dpi, each photo exactly 2 × 2 in, with a 1-inch bar to measure, and the print guide and every store price page ask you to measure one photo with a ruler before you use it.

Changes to the checks

• October 21, 2026: the face detection files download only when you tap Take photo or Choose a photo, or drop a photo on the page, so opening a page no longer downloads about 5.7 MB. The checks didn't change.
• October 18, 2026: when a photo needs a retake, the result names one thing to fix first, with a small drawing and one line on what to change: which way to turn or straighten your head, how far to step back or where to aim the camera, or where to stand for the wall. On an iPhone, a line under the save button says to tap Save Image in the share menu. Two documents were added: the India visa and e-Visa, with no date check because its rules give no age limit, and the Canada visitor visa, where Color photo is off because black-and-white photos are allowed.
• October 12, 2026: the tool now levels a tilt of up to 15° before it crops, up from 12°. Facing the camera passes to 5°, passes with a quiet note to 7° only when MediaPipe's own head pose agrees, and is a Retake beyond that; Check used to run to 8.5°. A new Head level check looks for a chin tipped up or down. Mouth closed measures the gap against the lips' own height and looks for teeth, so full lips that meet pass, and a sliver of teeth is a Check. A face too dark to recover and glasses frames on a US photo are now Retake. The wall check sets aside the smooth falloff of light before it looks for objects, edges and shadows. A photo that's a little too tight can get plain margin with one tap, and a plain wall that came out gray gets an automatic brightness fix; both are listed as edits. In the camera, the photo is the frame the guide approved, and a turned head, a nod, closed eyes or an open mouth gets another try instead of a retake page. On our test bench of 990 samples with known answers, 75.7% of the photos that should pass got Ready or a one-tap fix, and 1.5% of the photos that need a retake were shown Ready.
• October 7, 2026: Facing the camera is now an angle measured along the line between the cheeks, so a tilted head no longer reads as a turned one. Good is still up to 5°, the frontal limit in ISO/IEC 19794-5, and Check runs to 8.5°, about where the old 22% limit was. We checked the angle on renders of our test faces turned by known amounts, 30 cm to 1 m from a phone camera: it stayed within about 1° of the real turn.
• October 3, 2026: a new check marks a black-and-white photo as Retake.
• September 25, 2026: the result uses calmer words. Checks show Good, Check, Retake or We can fix instead of OK, Review and Fix, and the verdict says Ready, Almost ready or Needs a retake. The checks and their thresholds didn't change.
• September 25, 2026: the background check now also compares the left and right halves of the wall, so a corner or edge behind the head gets Fix, like a shadow above it already did. A new check marks glasses or glare on glasses as Review. A new rule finds your shadow on the wall next to your head. The tool now straightens a tilt of 1.5° to 12° before it crops, and the verdict says what needs a new photo and what the tool can fix.

Questions