US Visa Photo at 600 × 600 px: Make It and the 2 × 2 Print From One Shot

Before you make anything, find out what your application needs, because US forms differ. The State Department's visa photo page splits it by category. A nonimmigrant visa on the DS-160 form asks you to upload a digital image while filling in the form, and some embassies and consulates also want one printed photo at the interview. An immigrant visa on the DS-260 needs two identical 2 × 2 inch prints at the interview. A Diversity Visa entry needs a digital image uploaded with the entry, and selected applicants later bring two prints to the interview.

Passports follow their own pages but the same square. A paper passport application takes one 2 × 2 inch color print, according to the passport photo page, while online renewal takes a digital file between 54 KB and 10 MB that you can crop inside the application, as the upload instructions explain. In short, most people applying for a US visa need a file, many need prints as well, and sooner or later the same person often needs both. That is why it pays to make them from one shot. The table below lists the three sets of rules, each linked to the page it comes from.

A print is measured in inches and a file in pixels, and the link between them is the resolution, written as DPI or pixels per inch. Photo printing has long worked at 300, and the State Department's digital image requirements use the same figure: to turn an existing 2 × 2 inch photo into a file, scan it at 300 pixels per inch. Two inches times 300 is 600, which is where the 600 × 600 minimum comes from. Run the sum the other way and a 600-pixel square printed at 300 pixels per inch comes out at exactly 2 inches.

The metric version is just as tidy. One inch is exactly 25.4 mm, as NIST's length units page defines it, so 2 inches is 50.8 mm, which the passport page rounds to 51 mm. The upper limit of 1200 pixels is the same print at 600 pixels per inch. Both numbers describe the same 2-inch square; the larger one just holds more detail. The table shows the same arithmetic for other inch sizes, including the 4 × 6 inch print that sheets of passport photos are usually printed on, which at 300 pixels per inch is 1200 × 1800.

The State Department recommends a professional photo service but allows you to take the photo yourself, provided it is not digitally enhanced or altered. It also says that low-quality phone photos, snapshots and full-length pictures are not acceptable, so the goal is a phone photo that does not look like one: sharp, evenly lit, straight on, against a plain white or off-white wall. Ask someone else to take it. Stand a little away from the wall so you cast no shadow on it, face a window or a soft light at head height, and have the helper stand several feet away with the phone at the height of your eyes.

Frame wider than the final square. The crop needs the whole head, the tops of the shoulders and some space on both sides, and a photo framed tightly in the camera leaves nothing to adjust. A head that fills about a third of the frame's height is plenty, and at the normal resolution of a modern phone it still leaves well over 1200 pixels for the square. Keep your expression neutral with both eyes open, take off glasses, which visa photos no longer allow except in rare medical cases, and take several shots so you can choose the sharpest. The comparison below explains why the rear camera is the better choice.

The crop is where the photo either meets the rules or does not. The visa photo page asks for the head, measured from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head, to fill between 50 and 69 percent of the image's height. On a 600-pixel square that is 300 to 414 pixels; on a 2-inch print it is 1 to 1 3/8 inches, the same range the passport page gives as 25 to 35 mm. The head should sit centered left to right with the face looking straight ahead. Hair may run past the edge of a passport photo, according to the passport page, as long as the whole head is shown at the right size.

Make one master crop and keep it. The Passport Photo Maker page does this directly: choose US passport & visa under Country & document, turn on the Head-size guide to see the allowed range, and let Auto-center face place the eyes and chin. If you prefer to crop by hand, cut a square that contains the head at the right share, then make the size exact with Resize to 600 × 600, which uses Crop to fill so nothing is stretched; set Crop position to Top if the face sits high in the frame.

Order matters when a file has both a pixel size and a KB limit. Crop first, resize second, compress last. Compressing a large photo and then resizing it wastes the compression and usually ends above the limit again, while compressing an already square 600 × 600 image is quick and gentle. The visa rules ask for a JPEG in color, 24 bits per pixel, in the sRGB color space, at or under 240 KB, and they add a less known limit: the compression ratio should be no higher than 20:1. A 600 × 600 color image holds 1,080,000 bytes of raw pixel data, so 20:1 works out to about 54,000 bytes. In practice, a file between roughly 60 KB and 240 KB satisfies both rules.

A 600 × 600 JPEG at ordinary quality usually lands inside that window without any effort. If yours is over 240 KB, compress the image with Compress by set to Target size and a target a little under the cap, such as 230 KB, so the tool aims below the limit rather than at it. If it comes out very small, raise the quality rather than the pixels. For other forms with tight limits, the guide to reducing image size in KB covers the trade-offs for photos, signatures and scans.

For prints, go back to the master crop rather than the compressed upload file. Lay six copies on a 4 × 6 inch sheet, which holds a 3 × 2 grid of 2-inch squares with room to cut; the Passport Photo Maker does this with its 4×6 in sheet layout. A photo kiosk or a pharmacy photo counter prints a 4 × 6 sheet for little money and on the right paper, and that is the simplest route. At home, use photo paper, set the printer to its best photo quality and, most importantly, print at actual size or 100 percent, never "fit to page", which shrinks or stretches every copy.

The passport page asks for prints on matte or glossy photo-quality paper, without visible printer dots, damage or creases, and it does not accept photocopies or scanned photos. The immigrant visa rules ask for photo quality paper too. After printing, measure one copy with a ruler before cutting the rest: the square should be 2 inches, or 51 mm, on each side, and the head 1 to 1 3/8 inches tall. If a store prints the sheet, check the same measurement before you leave.

Before you upload the file or hand over the prints, run through the rules once more against the official pages rather than memory. The visa and passport pages are updated from time to time; the visa page's note that eyeglasses are no longer allowed is one example of a rule that changed. The US passport photo requirements page keeps the State Department's rules for the 2 × 2 photo together with their links, and the guide to passport photo sizes by country helps if the same master photo also has to serve another country's application.

Keep the master crop and the date you took it. A visa photo must be less than six months old and show how you look now, so if a second application comes within that window you can export a fresh file or print a new sheet in minutes. The checklist below covers what the State Department will look at first.