Make My Passport Photo › All photo sizes › United States
United States Passport & Visa Photo: 2×2 in, Made and Printed at Home
The United States uses the square 2 by 2 inch format for both passports and visas, including the DS-160 online application. You can make a compliant photo in about a minute with our free online tool: upload a photo, let the automatic face alignment size your head correctly, and download a print ready sheet or a digital file for online applications. Everything runs in your browser, so your photo never leaves your device.
Make my United States photo now →Official requirements
The State Department's photo rules state that you must not change your photo using computer software, phone apps or filters, or artificial intelligence. Because of that, our tool starts with background replacement and the brightness, contrast, colour and sharpness sliders switched off whenever you pick a US document, so you cannot break the rule by accident. Cropping, straightening and resizing to the official 2×2 inch size are formatting rather than alteration, so those always stay available. If you are making a 2×2 photo for something else entirely, such as an ID card or another country’s form, you can turn editing back on in one click. For an actual US application, get the background right in the camera instead: a plain white or off white wall in even light, with no shadow falling behind you. Read the official rule.
Requirements can change, so verify with the issuing authority before submitting. Our crop guides show the allowed head size as shaded bands, so you can see compliance at a glance.
How many photos fit on one sheet
At the 2×2 in size, 6 photos fit on a single 4 × 6 inch sheet of photo paper, the standard print size at home printers, photo kiosks, and print shops worldwide. On A4 paper you can fit 20 photos. The tool tiles the sheet automatically with a small gap and dotted cutting guides between photos, and you print at 100 percent scale. See how to print a passport photo at home for the paper and scaling settings to use.
How it works
First, add a recent photo taken in even light against a plain wall; a phone photo is fine. Second, the tool finds your face and positions it inside the official head size bands, and you can fine tune by dragging and zooming. Third, download: the print sheet costs $5.99 and the single digital photo for online application portals costs $3.99, with a free watermarked preview before you pay. If the application website has pixel or file size limits, enter them and you get a correctly compressed file plus a full quality copy.
Why use this instead of a studio
A studio charges $12 to $17 for a handful of prints. Here you pay once and print as many as you need, whenever you need them, and your photo is processed entirely on your device rather than uploaded to a server.
Start with the United States template →Uploading to the DS-160 instead of printing?
The online application has its own file specification: a square JPEG, 600 to 1200 pixels, under 240 KB. See the DS-160 photo requirements and the one-click preset that produces a matching file.