The United Kingdom runs one photo standard in two formats. Apply online and you upload a digital file: at least 600 × 750 pixels, at least 50 KB, and no larger than 10 MB for a passport or 6 MB for a visa. Apply on paper and you hand over a print measuring 45 mm high by 35 mm wide, with the image of you — crown of the head to chin — between 29 mm and 34 mm. The rest is shared wording: in colour, unaltered by computer software, a plain expression with your mouth closed, and no other objects or people in the frame.
One number in the table needs a word of explanation. The pixel figures shown there are the dimensions we output, deliberately above the GOV.UK floor of 600 × 750; the millimetre figures are the printed sizes the paper routes ask for.
Four of the routes below are digital submissions — the online passport application, a child passport applied for online, the BNO passport and the UKVI visa. GOV.UK is blunt about the first: you need a digital photo to apply for a passport online. Its no-cropping instruction is a conditional one — if you are using a photo taken on your own device, include your head, shoulders and upper body, and leave the cropping to the application. The BNO passport, held by people who registered as British nationals (overseas) through a connection with Hong Kong before 1 July 1997, takes exactly the same digital file as any other British passport. The visa adds constraints of its own: a jpg or jpeg file, vertically orientated, never mirrored or flipped, never a scan or photo of another photo — and UK Visas and Immigration rules out reusing the picture already in your passport or identity card.
Two routes still run on paper. A paper passport form needs two identical prints, left loose and separated from each other rather than attached to the form. The DVLA wants a recent printed passport type photo and tells you not to sign the back of it; you send it with form D1, picked up at most Post Offices, or renew at a Post Office that deals with DVLA photocard licence renewal. Either way the print has to be in colour on plain white photographic paper with no border, produced to a professional standard, and never a cut down version of a larger picture.
His Majesty's Passport Office, part of the Home Office, owns the guidance that the passport, child passport and BNO passport all inherit. UK Visas and Immigration publishes a separate page for visa applicants, dated 12 February 2026. The DVLA, under the Department for Transport, handles driving licences and simply borrows the passport type photo. That shared ancestry is why the background wording repeats with one variation: a plain light-coloured background for a digital upload, plain cream or light grey for a print, and in both cases you must be in clear contrast to whatever is behind you.
The guidance carves out room for children. Under 6, they do not have to look directly at the camera or hold a plain expression; under 1, they do not have to have their eyes open, and you may support the head with your hand provided the hand stays out of the picture, or lay the baby on a plain light-coloured sheet and take the photo from above. For everyone else the wording is tighter, though not absolute: do not wear glasses unless you have to, and arrange for someone else to take the picture rather than doing it alone. IDPhotoBy takes a photograph you already have, formats it to the figures above and checks it against them, free, with no payment required.
