What Are The Requirements for a Proper Passport Photo?
There are a lot of identification cards and the passport is one of them. A passport is a travel document that contains identifying information of the bearer such as a photograph, a name, age, date of birth and a lot more.
This is not as surprising as it may seem. A passport is actually more than a piece of identification. This important document is needed for you to be able to travel to other countries. It is a way for the authorities to track your destination while checking your identification and nationality. Together with your full name, date of birth and country of citizenship, your photograph will be able to identify that the owner of the passport is really you.
Nevertheless, there are already a lot of swindlers these days who are making fake passport as a way of living. There are also a lot of people who are faking their applications by pretending to be somebody else. This results to the rigid requirements when acquiring a passport photo. The requirements of passports are really rigid compared to those other identification cards. The photo provides the reliable identification that is needed to know if the bearer is really the owner of the passport.
The photo should provide a clear picture of you and should really look like you. As much as necessary, avoid having any issues with your photo so that you will not have a problem later on. In case there will be an issue with your photo,it will surely cause a problem with your passport application later on.
Do you have a particular picture in mind that you are planning to use for your passport? You may be able to do that provided that the picture conforms with all the necessary requirements of a proper passport picture. For starters, the picture should be two inches by two inches. It has to be colored with a white background and the paper that you will use should be thin photo stock. When you are printing your photo, make sure that it is using the continuous tone. It is very important that the photo will remain as the original one which means you are not permitted to do some enhancing, editing and retouching.
There are still more rules to follow even if your photo will be able to meet the requirements. Are there any shadows showing at the back of your head? Your photo should be hitting Between 1 1/8 inches to 1 3/8 inches of your eye height from the bottom of the photo edge. The background of your picture should not contain any other color and it should remain as plain white without anything else showing. You are not allowed to wear any jewelry and the expression of your face should remain natural.