How to take a passport photo with your phone (iPhone & Android)

A modern smartphone has more than enough resolution for a passport photo. What causes rejections is almost never the camera — it is the setup: wrong lighting, beauty filters, a cluttered background, or framing that puts your face too close or too far from the lens. Get the setup right and you will have a compliant photo in under five minutes.

Set up your background first

Before you even open the camera, sort the background. Official passport photo requirements call for a plain, light-coloured background — white or off-white in most countries. Find a blank wall or hang a plain white bed sheet. Step about 40–60 cm (roughly 1.5–2 ft) away from the wall. That gap prevents your head from casting a shadow directly onto the background, which is one of the most common reasons photos are rejected. If you cannot find a plain wall, shoot against any clear surface and remove the background later — see the full background colour guide for what each country actually requires.

Get the lighting right

Lighting is the single biggest variable you control. The goal is even, diffuse light on your face with no shadows under your nose, chin, or eye sockets.

The best setup: Stand facing a large window during daylight hours. Natural window light is soft and wraps around your face from one direction. Position yourself so the window is directly in front of you — not to the side, which creates half-shadow on your face.

Avoid these lighting situations:

• Overhead ceiling lights on their own — they throw hard shadows under your eyes and nose.
• Direct sunlight streaming through the window — it overexposes one side of your face.
• The phone’s built-in flash — it flattens your face, causes harsh glare on skin, and often triggers red-eye.
• Lamps behind you or to the side — they create a backlit silhouette effect.

If natural light is not available, place two bright LED lamps at roughly 45-degree angles on either side of your face, at the same height as your head. This mimics studio lighting and removes the harsh overhead-shadow problem.

iPhone camera settings

Open the native Camera app and use these settings before shooting:

• Mode: Photo (not Portrait, not Video, not Cinematic).
• Live Photos: Tap the Live Photo icon (the set of rings at the top) to turn it off. Live Photos add movement data you do not need and can make file handling awkward.
• Flash: Make sure the lightning bolt icon shows a line through it — flash off.
• Lens: Use the rear camera. The front/selfie camera on iPhones introduces a slight wide-angle distortion that can make your face look broader than it is.
• Focus and exposure lock: Tap and hold on your face in the frame until you see “AE/AF Lock” appear at the top. This stops the camera from shifting exposure as you move.
• Zoom: If someone is taking the photo for you from about 1.5 m (5 ft) away, use 1x or very slight zoom — 1.2x to 1.5x — to avoid focal distortion from being too close. Never use digital zoom beyond 2x; it degrades sharpness.
• Filters: Make sure no filter is active. Swipe through the filter options at the bottom and ensure “Original” is selected.

On iPhone 15 and later, the main camera is 48 MP. Shoot at the default resolution setting — do not reduce it.

Android camera settings

Android varies by manufacturer, but the key settings to check are the same. The names differ slightly:

• Mode: Standard “Photo” mode. Not “Pro”, not “Night”, not “Portrait”.
• Beauty / Skin smoothing / AI enhancement: This is the critical one. Samsung has a “Remaster” toggle and beauty modes under camera settings. Google Pixel’s “Best Face” mode should be turned off. OnePlus and Xiaomi often have an “AI scene enhancement” switch — turn it off. Any filter that smooths or reshapes skin will alter your facial features enough to trigger a rejection.
• Resolution: Set to the highest available. On most modern Androids this is found under Settings > Picture size within the camera app.
• Flash: Off.
• Rear camera: Same reason as iPhone — the front camera uses a wide-angle lens that slightly distorts faces.
• Grid lines: Turn on a 3×3 grid to help centre your face in the frame.

Framing and distance

Have someone else take the photo if at all possible. Self-timer shots on a phone propped against a book work, but a helper lets you check framing in real time.

• Stand about 1.2–1.5 m (4–5 ft) from the camera.
• The top of your head should sit just below the top of the frame, with your chin well above the bottom.
• Your face should fill roughly 70–80% of the frame height — not a tiny face in the centre, and not a close crop that cuts off the top of your head.
• Hold the phone at eye level or just slightly above. Shooting from below (camera looking up) is unflattering and creates perspective distortion.

Posing correctly

Look straight into the lens — not the screen, the actual lens. Keep your expression neutral: mouth closed, jaw relaxed. Most countries technically allow a natural, slight smile as long as your mouth stays closed and your eyes are fully open. Check the rules for smiling in passport photos before you decide.

Keep your shoulders square to the camera. Pull your hair back if it falls across your eyes or eyebrows — both must be fully visible. Remove glasses, even if you normally wear them, since most passport authorities no longer accept them in photos.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Shooting with the selfie camera — the wide-angle lens distorts proportions.
• Leaving beauty filters on — smoothing and reshaping will cause a rejection.
• Not locking exposure — auto-exposure can shift between shots, giving you an inconsistently bright or dark face.
• A background shadow — stand further from the wall.
• Wrong crop — a raw phone photo is never passport-photo dimensions. You must crop it.

Crop and finalise your photo

Your phone photo will be several megabytes and the wrong aspect ratio for a passport photo. Upload it to the free passport photo tool, select your country, and the tool will automatically crop to the exact required size, clean up the background if needed, and produce a print-ready file at the correct DPI.

For a complete walkthrough of the full at-home process — including printing options — see how to take a passport photo at home.