How to take a passport size photo at home with your phone

A studio is the easiest way to get a passport size photo, but it is not the only way. For an online application you need a digital file, and a phone can produce a good one if you set up the shot with a little care. This guide covers the setup, the mistakes that get photos rejected, and how to turn the picture into a file a form will accept.

What a form-ready photo looks like

Head and shoulders only, facing the camera directly.
A plain background. NTS asks for blue or white. Where a portal does not name a colour, white or light blue is the usual choice.
Even light on the face, with no hard shadow on the wall behind you.
Recent. FPSC, ASF and PPSC all ask for a recent or latest photograph.
Formal. No cap and no sunglasses.

Set up the background and light

Find a plain white or light wall. If you do not have one, hang a white or light blue bedsheet and pull it tight so it has no folds. Stand about two feet in front of it. Standing right against the wall throws a dark shadow around your head.

Daylight gives the best result. Face a window so the light falls on your face from the front, and take the photo during the day. Avoid a tube light directly overhead, which puts shadows under the eyes, and avoid the phone’s flash, which flattens the face and can leave a bright spot on the wall.

Take the photo

Ask someone else to hold the phone. A selfie bends the shape of the face because the camera is so close, and ASF’s guidelines rule selfies out by name.
Use the main camera on the back of the phone, not the front camera.
Hold the phone upright at the height of your eyes, about four to five feet away.
Leave space around your head and shoulders. You will crop later, and a photo that is too tight cannot be fixed.
Keep your head straight, look into the lens, and keep a neutral expression with your mouth closed.
Take several photos and choose the sharpest one.

Mistakes that spoil the photo

Using a filter or beauty mode. The photo should look like you.
Cropping a face out of a group or event photo. The background and angle give it away.
A tilted head or a photo taken from above or below.
A busy background such as a door, curtain or shelf.
Photographing a printed passport photo. The print’s texture and glare show up, and the result looks soft. If a printed photo is all you have, photograph it in daylight, flat and without flash.

Crop it and bring it under the limit

A passport photo is 35 mm wide and 45 mm tall, so it is slightly taller than it is wide. Open the resizer for your form, choose your photo, and keep the “Passport photo” shape selected. Drag the picture and use the zoom until your head and shoulders fill the frame with a little space above your hair.

The tool then saves the photo below the form’s limit. A plain background helps here in a way that is easy to miss: flat colour takes almost no space in a JPG, so more of a small 20 or 30 KB file is spent on your face. A photo taken against a patterned curtain will look noticeably worse at the same file size.

When to go to a studio anyway

If the form also needs printed photographs later, for example at the test centre or the interview, a studio visit gets you prints and a digital copy together. Ask the studio to send the digital file by email or on a USB drive rather than through a chat app, so that you receive the original and not a recompressed copy.