Indian Passport Photo Maker

The Passport Seva instruction booklet is explicit: a photograph is not required for applications submitted at a Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) or a Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK). Your photograph is captured at the counter during your appointment. If you booked a PSK or POPSK appointment, you can skip the photo studio entirely.

A printed photograph is required only when you submit through a different collection centre — a District Passport Cell (DPC), an authorised Speed Post Centre (SPC), or a Citizen Service Centre (CSC) such as Bangalore One, e-Seva or e-Sampark. In those cases you paste one colour photograph into the box printed on the application form.

Separately from all of this, the online application flow now asks you to upload a photograph and a signature to the portal before the application is accepted. That upload is a digital file with its own rules, and it is what most people are actually looking for when they search for an Indian passport photo size.

The printed photograph is 4.5 cm in length by 3.5 cm in width, and the form instructions add that it must not be smaller than the box provided. The online upload must be a JPEG of exactly 630 x 810 pixels and under 250 KB. The portal checks the pixel dimensions automatically, so a file that is even slightly off is rejected before anyone looks at it.

These are not two different photographs. 630 divided by 810 is 0.7778, and 35 divided by 45 is also 0.7778 — identical proportions. A single 630 x 810 image satisfies the portal and prints correctly at 4.5 x 3.5 cm, at roughly 457 DPI. That is why this tool exports one file rather than making you crop twice.

The size that trips people up is 2 x 2 inches (51 x 51 mm). That square is the Ministry of External Affairs specification for an Indian visa and for an OCI card, not for a passport. Many photo studios and online tools default to it because it is also the US passport size, and the result is a photograph the Passport Seva portal will not take.

Both the form instructions and the upload instructions tell you to wear dark clothing. The reason is practical: the background must be plain white, so a white or pale garment leaves your shoulders with no visible edge. Uniforms are separately listed as unacceptable, whatever their colour.

Head coverings are permitted only for religious reasons, and even then the facial features from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead and both edges of the face must be clearly visible. The upload instructions add a specific requirement for turbans: they must be light in colour, white or light blue. Your forehead must be visible, with no hair, cap, hijab or turban across it, and both ears must show.

Glasses are not banned outright, but they are a common reason for rejection. Glare on the lenses and frames covering the eyes are both listed problems, and tinted or dark glasses are never acceptable. Removing your glasses is the safest choice.

Passport Seva's own capture guidance is unusually specific: take the photo from at least 1.5 metres away, with the flashlight off, under even lighting, with no shadow on your face or the background. Keep your head straight rather than tilted, look into the lens, keep your eyes open and your expression natural — no grinning, frowning or raised eyebrows.

Start from an image larger than 2500 x 2500 pixels. A photo forwarded through a messaging app has usually been recompressed and downscaled, which shows up as soft detail once it is cropped to a head-and-shoulders frame. Use the original file from your camera roll.

One instruction deserves emphasis: do not use filters or photo editing tools. Beauty modes, skin smoothing, face reshaping and AI retouching all change facial features, and a photo that no longer matches your face is grounds for rejection. Replacing the background with plain white and cropping to the required frame is a different thing entirely — it is what the rules ask for, and it leaves your face untouched.

The instruction booklet lists them plainly: black and white photographs, photographs smaller than the box on the form, dark backgrounds, uniforms, eyes hidden behind coloured or dark glasses, computer printouts instead of photo paper, damaged photographs that are torn, creased or marked, eyes covered by hair, glare on eyeglasses, and photographs cut out of group photographs.

For the digital upload the failure modes are different and mostly mechanical: wrong pixel dimensions, a file over 250 KB, or a photo that has been visibly edited. Because the portal validates the file automatically and allows only 12 attempts per application, an incorrectly sized file costs you one of a small number of tries.

Finally, remember the signature is a separate upload with its own rules. Sign on white paper with a black or blue bold pen, scan it, crop it to a rectangle around the signature only, and keep the file under 100 KB. Uploading a photograph of the whole sheet is a common mistake.