You have a set of 2×2 inch photos from a US passport application. Now you need a Schengen visa photo, or an Indian one, or a Canadian one. The frames are different sizes, but that is what image editors are for — so you scale the square down and crop it to 35×45 mm, and it looks right.
It is not right, and the reason is a number that almost nobody publishes: how much of the frame your head is supposed to fill. Every official specification states it, every requirements page repeats it in millimetres, and hardly anyone converts it into the one form that makes photos comparable between countries — a percentage of the frame height. So we did that for the eleven specifications our passport photo maker supports, and then worked out which ones can actually share a photo.
The rule nobody converts
A passport photo has two measurements, not one. The frame — 2×2 inches, 35×45 mm — is the one everybody quotes. The second is the distance from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head, and it is the one that gets photos rejected, because it is invisible: a photo can be exactly the right size and still be wrong.
Stated in millimetres, those head figures look similar to one another. Stated as a share of the frame height, they are not remotely similar:
| Specification | Frame | Head height | Head as a share of frame height |
|---|---|---|---|
| India — passport, domestic | 35×45 mm | 36–38 mm | 80–84% |
| Schengen / EU visa | 35×45 mm | 32–36 mm | 71–80% |
| Australia | 35×45 mm | 32–36 mm | 71–80% |
| Japan | 35×45 mm | 32–36 mm | 71–80% |
| United Kingdom | 35×45 mm | 29–34 mm | 64–76% |
| China — visa | 33×48 mm | 28–33 mm | 58–69% |
| Türkiye — biometric | 50×60 mm | 32–36 mm | 53–60% |
| United States (2×2 in) | 50.8×50.8 mm | 25–35 mm | 49–69% |
| India — OCI / visa abroad | 51×51 mm | 25–35 mm | 49–69% |
| Canada | 50×70 mm | 31–36 mm | 44–51% |
| Brazil | 50×70 mm | 31–36 mm | 44–51% |
The span runs from 44% to 84%. A face that fills a Canadian photo correctly occupies about half the frame; the same face in an Indian passport photo has to fill more than four fifths of it. Those are not two versions of one portrait. They are two different photographs, taken from different distances.
Notice also that the frame size tells you almost nothing. Schengen, the UK, Australia, Japan and Indian domestic photos are all 35×45 mm, and their head windows are 71–80%, 64–76%, 71–80%, 71–80% and 80–84%. Same rectangle, three different rules — and the Indian one does not overlap the British one at all.
How many of these can share a photo
With the figures in a comparable form, the question becomes arithmetic. Two specifications can share one framing only if their head-share windows overlap somewhere. Of the 55 pairs among these eleven specifications, 23 overlap and 32 do not.
So a little under half of the combinations are theoretically compatible — and “theoretically” is doing real work in that sentence, because an overlap only means that some photos work, not that yours does. Your photo sits at one point inside your country's window, not across all of it.
What actually happens when you resize a US 2×2
This is the common case, so it is worth doing properly. Scale a 2×2 photo to the height of the target frame and crop the sides — the thing an image editor does in one step. The head scales with everything else, so the millimetre figure changes by the ratio of the two frame heights. Whether the result passes depends on where your head sat in the US window of 25–35 mm:
| Target | US head sizes that survive the resize | Share of the US window |
|---|---|---|
| India — OCI / visa abroad | 25.0–34.9 mm | 99% |
| China — visa | 29.6–34.9 mm | 53% |
| Türkiye — biometric | 27.1–30.5 mm | 34% |
| United Kingdom | 32.7–35.0 mm | 23% |
| Canada | 25.0–26.1 mm | 11% |
| Brazil | 25.0–26.1 mm | 11% |
| Schengen / EU visa | none | 0% |
| Australia | none | 0% |
| Japan | none | 0% |
| India — passport, domestic | none | 0% |
Four of the ten cannot be reached from a US photo by resizing at all. Not “usually not” — the arithmetic leaves no overlap. A US photo scaled to a 45 mm frame lands somewhere between 22.1 and 31.0 mm of head, and Schengen, Australia and Japan all start at 32 mm. India's domestic specification starts at 36 mm, which is above the range before you even begin.
Of the six that are reachable, four give you a narrow target. If your US photo is at the generous end of its window, it can become a UK photo and cannot become a Canadian one; at the tight end, the reverse. The only comfortable case is India's OCI and overseas visa photo, which uses a 51×51 mm frame and the same 25–35 mm head — the US specification in metric, near enough.
Why “just resize it” keeps getting repeated
Because it is true of the part people can see. Change the pixel dimensions and the photo does become 35×45 mm; the frame is now correct and it looks like a Schengen photo. Every requirement you were told about is met.
The head-size rule is checked after that, often by software, and it is checked against a number that was never in your hands. That is why the rejection feels arbitrary: the thing that failed was not on the list you were working from.
Getting it right needs a re-crop, not a resize — the face has to be placed against the new frame's head band rather than carried across from the old one. That in turn needs the original photograph, the one with room around the head, rather than the already-cropped passport photo. If all you have is the finished 2×2, you can crop tighter but never looser, which is exactly why the three specifications that want a bigger head than the US are the ones that are unreachable.
The second number that is missing: pixels
“2×2 inches” is not a specification for a digital file, because inches only become pixels once you name a resolution. At 300 DPI a 2×2 photo is 600×600 pixels, which is the bottom of the range the US State Department accepts. The same photo described as 2×2 inches at 72 DPI is 144×144 pixels and is rejected, with its dimensions perfectly correct in inches.
At 300 DPI, the eleven frames come out at:
| Specification | Frame | Pixels at 300 DPI |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 50.8×50.8 mm | 600×600 |
| India — OCI / visa abroad | 51×51 mm | 602×602 |
| Schengen, UK, Australia, Japan, India domestic | 35×45 mm | 413×531 |
| China — visa | 33×48 mm | 390×567 |
| Türkiye | 50×60 mm | 591×709 |
| Canada, Brazil | 50×70 mm | 591×827 |
Two things follow. A 35×45 mm photo at 300 DPI is only 413 pixels wide, so a file that is comfortably large enough for a US application has pixels to spare for a European one — resolution is rarely the binding constraint when you go that direction. And if you are printing rather than uploading, DPI is the whole game: the same 600×600 pixel file is a correct 2×2 print at 300 DPI and an 8×8 inch poster at 75.
What to do instead
- Start from the original photograph, not from a finished passport photo. Cropping tighter is possible; adding back the space around a head is not.
- Crop to the target country's head band, then set the frame. Doing it in that order is what makes the head share come out right; doing it the other way round is what produces a correctly sized photo with the wrong face in it.
- Check the resolution in pixels, not in inches, before you upload.
- Do not assume the frame implies the rule. Five of these eleven specifications use 35×45 mm, and they carry three different head rules.
Our passport photo maker draws the head band for the specification you pick and positions the crop against it, which is the step this article is really about. There are direct pages for the common ones: US 2×2, Schengen visa, UK passport and Indian passport. All of them run in your browser, so the photograph — which is a photograph of your face, attached to an identity document application — is never uploaded anywhere.
Where these numbers came from
The frame and head-height figures are the published requirements of each issuing authority, and they are the same figures our tool uses: they live in one table in the passport photo maker's source, so the article and the tool cannot drift apart. The percentages, the pair count and the resize windows are arithmetic on those figures, which means you can check every one of them with a calculator and the official page for your country.
One caution worth stating plainly: requirements change, and some authorities publish tolerances rather than hard edges, so treat the windows above as the shape of the problem rather than as a substitute for the official page you are applying through. The point that does not change is the one this article exists for — the frame is not the rule, and resizing does not carry the rule across.