Terms of service

Last updated 16 September 2026

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are between you and IDPhoto.now, the operator of this website. By starting an order you agree to them. If you do not, do not upload a photograph.

2. What the service is

We compare a photograph you upload against the published photo requirements for one document and one submission route, and we prepare the materials that route needs. Specifically:

• A free automated check. You upload a photo, we measure what can be measured from the file, and we show you the result before you are asked to pay anything. Every rule we could not settle from the file is named as such rather than counted as a pass.
• A paid check. The full report, a trained human reviewer looking at the photograph for the things software cannot judge, and the deliverables for your profile. For a paper application, that includes a print-ready 2 × 2 inch layout and a 4 × 6 inch sheet with six copies on it. For online passport renewal, it includes your original file handed back untouched and a walkthrough of the State Department's own crop tool.
• Retakes. If a reviewer asks for a different photograph, uploading another one under the same order costs nothing.

What you receive depends on the document profile you chose, and the two we support are different from each other in ways that matter. They are set out on the standards we check against.

3. What the service is not

This section is the important one, and none of it is boilerplate.

We do not alter your photograph

We check; we do not change. We do not retouch, beautify, replace backgrounds, open eyes, straighten heads, remove blemishes, adjust brightness or run anything generative over your face. For the online renewal profile we hand back the file you uploaded, byte for byte, because that is what the State Department asks for and because its own application does the cropping. For the paper profile we lay your photograph out at the required print size — a layout operation on a separate print file — and you still get your untouched original alongside it.

This is not squeamishness. The State Department's own instruction is: "Submit the original, unchanged photo. Do not change your photo using computer software, phone apps or filters, or artificial intelligence", and it says it checks for exactly that (travel.state.gov passport photos(opens in a new tab)). A service that edits your photo to make it pass is selling you the thing that gets applications refused.

We do not submit anything to anyone

We are not an agent, a filing service or a courier. We never contact the State Department or any other authority on your behalf, we never hold or submit an application, and we never receive a decision about you. You submit your own application, with your own photograph.

We are not affiliated with any government body

IDPhoto.now is an independent commercial service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, partnered with or acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of State or any other government body, and we are not a law firm or an immigration adviser. Where we quote an official rule we link to the official page it came from so you can read it yourself.

We cannot promise your photograph will be accepted

Whether a photograph is accepted is always the issuing authority's decision. That decision is made by people we have no contact with, under processes we do not see, and it can turn on things that are nothing to do with the image — an inconsistency on your form, a change in your appearance, an examiner's judgement. Nobody in this market can guarantee acceptance, including us, and we will not imply it in any wording anywhere on this site. What we promise is to check your photograph carefully against rules we publish with their sources, to tell you honestly what we did not check, and to put a human in front of every paid order.

We do not promise a turnaround time

A human reviews every paid order. We have not run the service long enough to measure how long that takes, so we do not publish a figure. If you have a deadline, work backwards from it with room to spare and do not rely on us to save it.

4. What you promise us

By uploading a photograph you confirm that:

• The photograph is of you, or of a person you are entitled to act for — your own child, or someone whose affairs you are lawfully authorised to handle.
• You have the right to upload it and to let us process it for the purposes described in our privacy policy.
• You have not edited it in a way the document profile forbids, and you are not asking us to check a photograph you know to be altered, generated or of someone else.
• The document profile you chose is the right one for your application. We cannot verify which route you are applying by, and the rules differ between them. If you pick the wrong one, the check you get is against the wrong requirements.
• What you tell us is accurate, including anything you tell us about when the photograph was taken.
• You are old enough to enter into a contract where you live.

5. Acceptable use

You must not:

• upload a photograph of another person without being entitled to act for them;
• use the service to test whether an altered, generated or otherwise fraudulent photograph would pass a government check;
• upload files designed to break or overload the service — malformed images, decompression bombs, or anything that is not a photograph;
• attempt to reach orders, files or administrative functions that are not yours, or to probe for a way to do so;
• scrape, resell, sublicense or rebrand the service or its reports, or present our output as an official approval;
• use the service in a way that breaks the law where you are.

If we believe an order breaches this section we may refuse it, stop work on it, delete the materials and refund what you paid. We will tell you that we have, unless telling you would itself be unlawful.

6. Price and payment

The price is 9.90 USD: one payment, for one person and one document. There is no subscription and you do not need an account to buy. Taxes are calculated at checkout and shown to you before you pay. The full breakdown is on pricing.

Payments are processed by Dodo Payments, which is the merchant of record. That means Dodo is the legal seller for the transaction, it appears on your receipt and on your bank statement rather than us, and it collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST. It does not mean Dodo is responsible for the service itself, for your photograph, or for anything we say on this site — those remain ours.

7. Retakes and refunds

A retake under the same order costs nothing, whether a reviewer asked for it or you simply want to try a better photograph. Refunds cover our fee and nothing else — never a government fee, never travel or appointment costs, and never the authority's decision. The full position, including a worked list of situations and what happens in each, is on the refund policy, which forms part of these terms.

8. Our liability, in plain language

What we are responsible for: doing the thing we said we would do. Running the checks we publish, against the requirement version we publish, correctly. Having a trained person look at your photograph before we call it approved. Giving you the files your profile promises. Keeping your photograph the way this site says we keep it. If we get one of those wrong, tell us and we will put it right — a free retake or your money back, your choice.

What we are not responsible for: the issuing authority's decision, and the costs that hang off it. We are not liable for a refused or delayed application, for government fees, for travel, appointments, expedited-processing fees, rebooked flights, lost earnings or a missed deadline. Those losses can be far larger than the 9.90 USD you paid us, they depend on decisions made by people we never speak to, and taking money for a photo check is not the same as insuring your trip.

Except where the law says otherwise, our total liability for any order is limited to the amount you actually paid us for that order.

Nothing in these terms limits anything that cannot lawfully be limited — liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any right you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by agreement. If some part of this section turns out to be unenforceable where you live, the rest of it still stands.

9. Your consumer rights

Nothing here takes away a right you have under consumer law where you live. If those rights and these terms disagree, those rights win. How the right to cancel a digital service interacts with a check we start immediately at your request is one of the specific questions the pending legal review has to answer; until it does, our practical position is the one on the refund policy page, which is more generous than the minimum rather than less.

10. Availability and changes

This is a pilot service. It may be unavailable, and we may change, suspend or withdraw parts of it. If we withdraw a document profile — for example because the authority changes a rule we can no longer check honestly — we stop selling it and say why, rather than keeping it on sale against requirements we know are stale. An order already placed is judged against the requirement version that was recorded when you placed it; a later rule change does not retroactively fail a completed order.

If we change these terms, the date at the top changes. Material changes do not apply retroactively to an order you have already paid for.

11. Your data

How we handle your photograph is set out in the privacy policy, and how to have it deleted is on delete your photos and data. Both form part of these terms.

12. Governing law and disputes

Not settled, and deliberately left blank. The governing law and the forum for disputes are among the items in the pending legal review. We would rather tell you that than copy a jurisdiction out of a template and have you rely on it. Until it is resolved, your statutory rights where you live apply as they normally would, and the fastest route to a resolution is to email us.

13. Contact

Everything reaches us at support@idphoto.now. Include your order reference, which starts with ord_, and please do not attach your photograph — see contact for why.