India Document Photos: One Background, Several Sizes

Every Indian document photo in the table below sits on a white background. After that the standard forks three ways. The 2 × 2 inch (51 × 51 mm) square belongs to the papers handled by Indian missions and their service providers — passport re-issue, the regular visa sticker, the OCI card and the police clearance certificate. The 4.5 cm × 3.5 cm print, the same rectangle as 35 × 45 mm, belongs to the statutory forms filed inside India: the Passport Seva application and its under-4 minor variant, the PAN card form and the Election Commission's Form 6. Two portals go their own way — the e-Visa takes a square JPEG, and e-FRRO a 35 × 35 mm one.

Several of these documents want one picture in two places at once. A passport re-issue handled through an Indian mission takes two photographs that must be identical, and the same checklist states that it is mandatory to upload the photo and signature on the government website before the application is filed. e-FRRO gives the instruction from the other end: upload the photo portion only, then bring the same photo along with the application form. A police clearance certificate also asks for two identical photographs, taken within the last six months.

The forms filed inside India care more about what happens to the print. Passport Seva wants it on good quality photo paper with a continuous tone, states that a computer print will not be accepted, and states that the photograph is not to be signed. The PAN form inverts that on one side only: your signature or left thumb impression has to run across the photograph affixed on the left of the form, while the photograph on the right must stay clear and without any mark — if a mark hinders the clear visibility of your face, the application may not be processed. The Election Commission asks for an unsigned photograph pasted in the box on Form 6, with the eyes open and both edges of the face clearly visible.

The Ministry of External Affairs runs Passport Seva and publishes both the application instruction booklet and the ICAO photograph guidelines behind it; those guidelines put the face at 80–85% of the frame and set a digital file of 630 × 810 pixels. The Bureau of Immigration, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, owns the visa side — the e-Visa portal, the regular visa instructions and e-FRRO — and repeats one formula across all three: full face, front view, eyes open, head centred in the frame with the full head from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin, no shadows on the face or the background, and no borders. The e-Visa adds a line the others do not, asking for the photograph without spectacles, and warns that an application is liable to be rejected if the photograph is not clear or not as per specification. The OCI portal contributes its own: the head must face the camera directly and must not tilt or be turned.

Beyond those two ministries, the rules travel with the form. The Income Tax Department's PAN application, filed through Protean on the Tax Information Network, sets its own 4.5 cm × 3.5 cm box and asks for two recent colour photographs with white backgrounds. The Election Commission of India sets an identical box on Form 6. And wherever a mission or its service provider handles the case, the line that repeats hardest is the ban on improving the picture — do not retouch or otherwise enhance or soften the photo. IDPhotoBy resizes a photograph you already have to whichever of these boxes applies and checks it against the numbers, free, with no payment required.