The standards we check against
Last updated 16 September 2026
Draft, pending legal review
No lawyer has read this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here is a statement that any photograph will be accepted. It is a description of how we decide what to measure, and of what state that work is currently in.
Anyone can claim to check a photo against government rules. This page is the part that is checkable: where our rules come from, what happens to a rule the authority does not publish, what we are permitted to do to your file, and who is allowed to say a requirement is correct. The current status of each profile is shown below exactly as the code records it, including where it is unfinished.
Five rules
1. One profile per document and per submission channel
A profile describes one document going in by one route. The same US passport photograph has different rules on paper and through the online renewal portal, so those are two separate profiles with separate sources, separate parameters and separate permissions. They are never merged, and a value is never borrowed from one to fill a gap in the other.
This is not pedantry. The paper page publishes print geometry and no file specification at all; the online page publishes a file specification and no geometry. A service that treats "US passport 2 × 2" as one universal standard is, by construction, telling half its customers something false.
2. Every parameter carries the official URL it came from
In our code a requirement value is not a number. It is a value plus the URL it was read from, and there is no way to write the one without the other. The report you receive shows that source link next to the rule, so you can read the authority's own wording rather than taking ours.
3. A parameter the authority does not publish is recorded as unknown
When the authority publishes no number, we store an explicit "unknown" with the reason — never a default, never a sensible-looking guess, never a figure copied from a similar document. An unknown parameter makes the corresponding check report Not checked and shows you the reason. It never silently passes.
This is the rule that costs us the most and matters the most. It is very easy to make a report look thorough by filling the gaps with plausible numbers. It is also the fastest way to tell somebody their photo is fine when you have measured it against a rule that does not exist.
4. A transform we have no explicit permission for is blocked
Silence is prohibition. Any operation on your file that a profile does not explicitly permit — with a source URL — resolves to forbidden. A permission with no source attached is also treated as forbidden, because an unsourced permission is not a permission. An engineer who forgets to mention cropping gets "cropping is blocked", not "cropping is fine".
The practical consequence is that our online renewal profile has an empty permission list, and the emptiness is the policy: we do nothing to that file at all.
5. A requirement version is signed off by a named person
Requirement versions are numbered and immutable. A version becomes verified only when a named human records that they read the authority's pages on a given date — never a script, never a model. Sources are re-read quarterly, and immediately whenever a registered URL redirects, 404s or changes its own "last updated" date, or whenever a customer reports a rejection citing a rule we did not check.
Two honest notes about that cadence. There is no automated monitor, and there will not be one in our own infrastructure: the authority's site refuses automated server-side requests, so re-reading is a person with a browser. And an order is judged against the requirement version recorded when it was created, so a later rule change never retroactively fails work that is already done.
The four results, and what each one means
| Result | What it means | What it does not mean |
|---|---|---|
| Looks right | We measured this and it meets the published requirement. | That the photograph will be accepted. |
| Needs fixing | We measured this and it does not meet the requirement. The report says what to change. | That it is the only problem. |
| A person will check | Not settleable from the file, or close enough to a limit that judgement is needed. A trained reviewer decides, on every paid order. | That something is wrong. |
| Not checked | We did not check it — either the authority publishes no number, or it is not measurable from a file. The reason is always shown. | That it passed. No claim was made at all. |
Every result also carries how we know: measured from your file, estimated by a model, judged by a trained reviewer, based on what you told us, or from the published requirements. Keeping that separate from the answer is what stops a measurement being mistaken for a decision, and a reviewer's judgement being mistaken for a machine's. Each report ends with a coverage line stating how many checks actually ran out of how many exist.
Numbers that are not ours to use
Circulating widely, and attached to "US passport photo" by a great many pages: 600 × 600 pixels minimum, 1200 × 1200 maximum, a square aspect ratio, sRGB at 24 bits per pixel, a 240 kB ceiling, 300 ppi, and an eye height of 28 to 35 mm from the bottom edge.
Not one of those is a US passport requirement. They are US visa requirements, from a different part of the same government site:
- US visa digital image requirements(opens in a new tab) — 600 × 600, 1200 × 1200, square, sRGB, 240 kB, 300 ppi, JPEG only.
- US visa photo composition template(opens in a new tab) — the 28 to 35 mm eye height.
There is a second source of the confusion worth naming. The State Department runs a separate Photo Tool whose code enforces a 600 × 600 JPEG, which is where some of those numbers get attached to passports by people reading the tool rather than the rules. The tool itself carries a banner reading, verbatim: "US Citizens: Do not use this tool if you are renewing your passport online." (Photo Tool(opens in a new tab)). A constant inside a cropping tool is not a published requirement, and we do not encode it as one.
None of these figures appears as a threshold anywhere in our checks. Where they appear in our code at all, it is in a comment explaining where they really come from.
The profiles we support today
US passport — paper application (form DS-11 or DS-82)
U.S. Department of State — Passport Services · submitted by paper form · adult applicants
| Requirement version | 1 |
|---|---|
| Status | Draft — not yet signed off by a named reviewer |
| Signed off on | Not signed off |
| Reviewer | None recorded |
| On sale | Yes |
Official sources
- U.S. Department of State — Passport Photos (paper application)(opens in a new tab)
Read on 2026-09-16. Establishes: 2×2 in (51×51 mm) print size; 25–35 mm head height; matte or glossy photo paper; plain white or off-white background; 6-month recency; colour; the complete prohibition on digital changes. - U.S. Department of State — Photo Tool(opens in a new tab)
Read on 2026-09-16. Establishes: That State provides a cropping tool for the paper-form path, and that it explicitly tells online renewers not to use it.
What this authority does not publish
- No pixel dimensions, aspect ratio, file format, file size, colour space or numeric DPI is published for the paper application — the artefact you submit is a print.
- No eye-height measurement is published for passport photos. The 28–35 mm figure circulating online is from the US visa programme.
- State does not publish a numeric sharpness, noise or exposure threshold; it describes the outcome ("not blurry, grainy, or pixelated") and leaves the judgement to a reviewer.
What we are permitted to do to your file
| Operation | Decision | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Crop | Allowed | State runs its own cropping tool for the paper-form path, so cropping to the 2×2 frame is permitted. The crop must not change the outline of the head, face or neck. |
| Resize | Allowed | Uniform scaling only, to reach the 2×2 in print size. State explicitly says "Do not stretch or compress your image to resize it", so non-uniform scaling is forbidden. |
| Rotate to level the head | Blocked | Rotating to level a tilted head changes the image. State asks for the head not to be tilted — the fix is a new photo. |
| Bake in the orientation flag | Allowed | Applied only to the print output so it prints the right way up. The uploaded original is preserved byte-for-byte. |
| Convert the file format | Allowed | A print-ready file has to be produced in some format; the deliverable here is a printable sheet, not the submitted artefact. |
| Re-compress | Allowed | Only when writing the print sheet, at maximum quality. The stored original is never re-encoded. |
| Convert the colour profile | Blocked | State publishes no colour-space requirement, so there is nothing to convert towards. |
| Replace the background | Blocked | "The background is cropped using a photo retouching tool, changing the outline of your head, face, and neck" is listed as unacceptable, and State says to fix the lighting and retake instead. |
| Retouch | Blocked | "Submit the original, unchanged photo. Do not change your photo using computer software, phone apps or filters, or artificial intelligence." |
| Adjust brightness or contrast | Blocked | State asks the applicant to change the camera exposure or lighting and retake, not to correct the file. |
| Generative upscaling | Blocked | "We check all photos to ensure you are not using artificial intelligence tools." |
| Lay out a print sheet | Allowed | Placing correctly-sized 2×2 in photos on a 4×6 in or 10×15 cm sheet is a layout operation and does not alter the photograph. |
What you actually receive
- Your original photo. Exactly the file you uploaded, unchanged, so you always have the untouched original.
- Print-ready 2×2 inch photo. Your photo cropped to the 2×2 inch frame with the head sized between 25 and 35 mm, ready to print on photo paper.
- 4×6 inch print sheet. Six copies of the 2×2 photo laid out on a 4×6 inch sheet, so a one-hour print booth costs you a few cents.
- Printing and submission checklist. What paper to use, what to check before you print, and the exact wording of the rules your photo was measured against.
We check your photo against the State Department’s published paper-application rules and give you a print-ready 2×2 inch layout. We do not retouch your photo, we do not submit anything to the State Department, and we cannot promise how they will decide.
US passport — online renewal upload
U.S. Department of State — Passport Services · submitted by online upload · adult applicants
| Requirement version | 1 |
|---|---|
| Status | Draft — not yet signed off by a named reviewer |
| Signed off on | Not signed off |
| Reviewer | None recorded |
| On sale | Yes |
Official sources
- U.S. Department of State — Uploading a Digital Photo (online renewal)(opens in a new tab)
Read on 2026-09-16. Establishes: Accepted file formats; the 54 KB–10 MB size band; the head-and-shoulders framing rule; that State provides its own crop tool and its own automated pre-check; the prohibition on edited, filtered or AI-generated photos. - U.S. Department of State — Renew Online(opens in a new tab)
Read on 2026-09-16. Establishes: That online renewal is only available to applicants aged 25 or older, among other conditions.
What this authority does not publish
- State publishes no pixel dimensions, aspect ratio, colour space or DPI for the online renewal upload. We do not check against numbers it has not published.
- State does not say the photo must be square. Its own application crops the photo, and it tells you to leave extra room around your face.
- State’s separate Photo Tool enforces 600×600 JPEG — and the tool itself says in a red banner not to use it for online renewal. Its constants are not requirements for this path.
- The online renewal page does not repeat the paper page’s bans on uniforms, headphones or face coverings. We flag those for a human rather than assume either way.
What we are permitted to do to your file
| Operation | Decision | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Crop | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "crop", so it is blocked. |
| Resize | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "resize", so it is blocked. |
| Rotate to level the head | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "rotate", so it is blocked. |
| Bake in the orientation flag | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "exifOrientationNormalisation", so it is blocked. |
| Convert the file format | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "formatConversion", so it is blocked. |
| Re-compress | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "recompress", so it is blocked. |
| Convert the colour profile | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "colourProfileConversion", so it is blocked. |
| Replace the background | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "backgroundReplacement", so it is blocked. |
| Retouch | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "retouching", so it is blocked. |
| Adjust brightness or contrast | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "brightnessContrastAdjustment", so it is blocked. |
| Generative upscaling | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "generativeUpscaling", so it is blocked. |
| Lay out a print sheet | Blocked | This profile does not state a policy for "printSheetLayout", so it is blocked. |
What you actually receive
- Your original photo, unchanged. Byte-for-byte the file you uploaded. This is what you upload to the State Department — their application does the cropping.
- Your checked report. Every rule we measured, what we found, and which rules only a person can judge — with the State Department’s own wording next to each one.
- Crop-and-upload walkthrough. How to position your photo in the State Department’s own crop tool, so you do not have to guess what "head and shoulders centred" means.
We check your photo against the State Department’s published online-renewal rules and hand back your original file untouched, with instructions for their crop tool. We do not crop, convert or edit the file, because State asks for the original. We do not submit anything on your behalf.
Read the status rows above
Both requirement versions are currently draft, with no sign-off date and no named reviewer. That is a launch gate we have written down rather than glossed over, and it is the reason the service is a pilot with payments in test mode rather than a shop. We would rather publish the gap than let a page imply a verification that has not happened.
Two places where our own judgement shows
Thresholds with no published number behind them. The authority describes sharpness, noise and exposure by outcome — "not blurry, grainy, or pixelated" — and publishes no figure. We do compute focus, exposure and noise scores, and the cut-offs that turn those scores into a pass, a review or a failure are our own engineering choices with no URL behind them. They are reported as measurements with a confidence level, never as the authority's line, and a borderline score goes to a person rather than being decided by the cut-off.
Our own file limits. The 25 MB upload ceiling and the formats we can decode are ours, not the authority's. Where the authority accepts a format we cannot open — HEIC and HEIF for online renewal — we report the readability check as an honest failure with instructions, rather than passing a file we never opened.
What happens when a rule changes
- The change is recorded against the requirement version, with the date, the person and the URL.
- If it is only wording, the current version stands and the change is logged. If a parameter we encode has changed value, the current version becomes stale and a new draft version is opened.
- If a rule appears that we cannot check honestly, or the source page is withdrawn, the profile comes off sale with a visible reason rather than quietly checking against something outdated.
- A named reviewer signs the new version off before it goes back on sale.
- Orders already in flight go to a human, who decides whether to ask for a new photograph. That is never automatic.