United States Visa Photo Maker — Free, Fast & Private
The United States Visa photo is square, 2×2 in, or 600×600 px at 300 DPI. A square frame has no long axis to trade headroom against, so US Department of State pins the head to 50–69% of the side and the eye line to 56–69% up from the bottom, over plain white.
Photo must be taken within the last 6 months. Pure white background. No head coverings except religious. The visa and passport routes publish different file-size rules — pick the one you are applying for.
Travel.state.gov states the American photograph in inches with the millimetre conversion beside it: 2 by 2 inches, which is 51 by 51 millimetres, with the head between 1 and 1 and three-eighths inches, or 25 to 35 millimetres, from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head. Printed copies must be on matte or glossy photo quality paper, and the photograph must have been taken within the last six months. Squareness alone makes it incompatible with every 35 by 45 document in this catalogue, and the head tolerance recorded here, 50 to 69 per cent, is the widest published anywhere in the set, a nineteen point range where most specifications allow ten. On a 50.8 millimetre frame that is 25.4 to 35.1 millimetres chin to crown, so a head that would be far too small for an Indian passport photograph sits comfortably inside this one.
Eyewear. The State Department instruction is blunt, take off any eyeglasses, sunglasses or tinted glasses, with the only route around it being a signed note from your doctor if a medical reason prevents removal. Hats and head coverings come off too. This catches people who have worn glasses in every photograph they own. The second trap is which American route you are filing, because the two publish different byte rules and conflating them is easy: the DS-160 visa upload takes anything up to 240 kilobytes with no minimum at all, while the online passport renewal accepts 54 kilobytes to 10 megabytes. A file that is entirely valid for one can be refused by the other purely on size, which is why this page asks you to choose before it exports. Infants get the one relaxation in the American rules: the State Department says it is okay if a baby's eyes are not entirely open.
Switch United States route in the tool and the export retargets; none of it leaves this browser tab. Figures come from US Department of State — travel.state.gov, DS-160 digital image requirements. If one has gone stale, contact@minipx.com.