Official standards
ICAO, ICAO 9303, biometric photos and consular legalisation — who sets the rules and what they mean.
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Official standards
- ICAO
- The International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets the worldwide standard for machine-readable travel documents and for the photographs printed on them.
- ICAO 9303
- The ICAO document that defines passport photo geometry: head size, eye position, background and lighting for photos that face-recognition gates can read.
- Biometric photo
- A photo that meets the machine-readable standard, so the face can be matched automatically at a border or in a visa system.
- Consular legalisation
- The process of having a document certified for use in another country. Photo rules are usually listed alongside it on consulate websites.
More glossary pages
- Sizes and measurementMillimetres, inches, head height, framing and orientation — the measurements that decide whether a photo is accepted.
- Resolution and filesPixels, ppi, dpi, aspect ratio, JPEG and PNG, file-size limits, colour space and interpolation.
- Working with the cropperPreset, crop, print sheet, cutting guide and bleed — the words used by the cropping tool itself.
- Units at a glanceEvery common photo size converted to pixels at 300 ppi and 600 ppi, and the countries that use it.