Passport Photo Size: US 2×2 vs India 630×810 vs Visa 35×45
The rejection is almost never “your face.” It is the wrong shape, the wrong kilobytes, or a PNG. Here are the sizes Convertify can actually output — and the ones we will not fake.
Written and fact-checked by the Convertify editorial team. We test every workflow on real documents (government forms, design exports, scanned IDs, source code) before publishing — and re-test on each review date to keep the steps current.
Passport and visa portals check three things and usually tell you about one: pixel dimensions, file size, and file type. Get any of them wrong and you see “photo does not meet specifications” with no hint which rule failed. The Passport photo tool on Convertify is built around the sizes the live cropper can produce — not a brochure list of every country’s millimetre chart.
The sizes that actually differ
A US passport photo is a square. An India digital passport photo and a Schengen visa photo are rectangles about 7:9. If you take a phone selfie and “resize” it, you either squash the face or pad it with bars. Crop to the shape first, then let JPEG compression hit the KB window.
| Preset on Convertify | Pixels | Typical KB | Shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| US 2×2 | 600×600 | 50–240 KB | Square (2×2 in at 300 DPI) |
| India 630×810 | 630×810 | 10–250 KB | 7:9 digital / ICAO-style |
| Visa 35×45 | 600×750 | 50–240 KB | 35×45 mm digital |
| UPSC photo | 413×531 | 20–300 KB | 3.5×4.5 cm at 300 DPI |
| Bank KYC photo | 200×230 | 20–50 KB | Small ID tile |
| Signature | 140×60 | 10–20 KB | Wide scan |
Those kilobyte windows are defaults you can raise or lower on the page if your portal prints a different cap. They are not a substitute for reading the form. Convertify is not the US State Department, MEA, or GOV.UK, and the cropper does not judge pose, glasses, or whether your ears are visible.
US 2×2 inch — the high-value English search
A 2×2 inch print at 300 DPI is 600×600 pixels. That is the size most digital US passport and visa photo uploads expect. Some CEAC / DS-160 supporting images also cap at 240 KB. A 12-megapixel phone photo is already thousands of pixels on a side; shrinking it without cropping leaves a huge JPEG that fails the cap, or a tiny stretched face if you force the square.
Use the US 2×2 chip on Passport photo. Fill is white, which matches the usual US white or off-white backdrop rule. If the wall behind you is a bookshelf, run Remove background first — it only works on a reasonably plain wall, and it is honest about that.
India 630×810, UPSC, bank photo, signature
Passport Seva-style digital photos are commonly 630×810 JPEG, 10–250 KB, white background. UPSC recruitment photos are 3.5×4.5 cm — 413×531 at 300 DPI — often 20–300 KB. Bank KYC tiles are frequently 200×230 and a brutal 20–50 KB. Signatures land around 140×60 and 10–20 KB. Thumb impressions are 160×200, 10–20 KB.
Those last three fail constantly when someone compresses a full-page scan instead of cropping. A 630×810 passport JPEG crushed to 15 KB is a different problem from a 200×230 bank tile that is still 180 KB because it was never resized. Pick the preset named on the form.
Visa 35×45 mm — and what we will not claim
35×45 mm is the Schengen / UK-style visa frame. Digitally, portals ask for either ~413×531 (300 DPI print size) or 600×750 (the common online minimum). Convertify’s Visa 35×45 preset outputs 600×750 JPEG in a 50–240 KB window with a white fill. That is a size the cropper can make.
UK online passport photos are a special case: GOV.UK wants a cream or light-grey background, not pure white. We do not invent a cream fill we cannot match. If you are filing a UK passport, retake against a cream wall. For many visa and Schengen uploads, white is accepted. Read the page you are filing, not a generic “passport photo” blog.
Too large, too small, wrong pixels, JPEG vs PNG
Too large. You cropped to the right pixels but the JPEG quality is still high. Lower the KB slider on Passport photo, or if the form has no crop — only a cap — use Fit to size or Compress PDF for a supporting document.
Too small. India and bank forms often publish a minimum (10 KB, 20 KB). A compressor that only has a ceiling can undershoot. Fit to size is the tool that holds both ends of a 20–50 KB or 100–200 KB band.
Wrong pixels. A 600×600 US photo uploaded to a 630×810 field will be rejected or stretched. The fix is a different crop, not another compression pass.
JPEG vs PNG. PNG keeps sharp edges and optional transparency. Passport portals want a solid background and a small file. Transparency looks like a checkerboard or a black box on some uploaders. Always JPEG for these forms.
White background. Remove background flood-fills a plain wall. It is not a studio hair-mask. LinkedIn and ID headshots with a blank wall work; a busy café does not. Files stay in the browser on every one of these tools.
A working order
- Take the photo in daylight against a plain wall, shoulders to camera.
- If the wall is almost white but not quite, run Remove background.
- Open Passport photo and tap the preset printed on the form (US 2×2, India 630×810, Visa 35×45, UPSC, bank, signature).
- Download the JPEG. Do not convert it back to PNG “to be safe.”
- If a later page in the same application wants a PDF under 100 KB or 200 KB, that is Compress PDF, not another photo crop.
Keep the original phone photo. US 2×2 at 600×600 and India 630×810 are different crops from the same file. Upscaling a 20 KB bank tile into a US passport square will never look acceptable.
Make the photo the form asked for
US 2×2, India 630×810, visa 35×45, UPSC, bank, and signature — JPEG, on your device.
Open Passport photo →