US passport photo requirements
The U.S. Department of State rules for prints and digital uploads. Set your route's KB cap in Sukat and it hits it exactly.
Compress a US passport photo
Crop to an exact 2 × 2 square (600–1200 px), keep the background plain white, then land under your route's KB cap — one workflow.
Upload your photo
Drop a JPG, PNG, HEIC, or WebP onto Sukat's drop zone. For a DS-160 visa or DV Lottery entry — which accept JPEG only — Sukat converts an iPhone HEIC to JPEG for you.
Crop to a 2 × 2 square
Click Crop at a 1:1 ratio and centre the head, with the crown 25–35 mm tall so the face fills 50–69% of the frame. Aim for 600–1200 px per side. For the biometric check, shoot against a real white wall — AI background swaps are banned as of January 2026 — and use Sukat to crop, size, and compress.
Export and hit the file limit
Choose JPEG and set Maximum File Size to your route's cap — 240 KB for a DS-160 or DV entry, or comfortably under 10 MB for online passport renewal. Click Convert & Download. Sukat binary-searches for the highest quality that fits.
Which US application needs which file
The 2 × 2 square is constant; the file rules are not. Here's what each route expects, and where Sukat fits.
US passport by mail (DS-82 / DS-11)
First-time and mailed renewal applications need one printed 2 × 2 photo, stapled to the form. Print a clean square and check it with a ruler before sending.
Online passport renewal (MyTravelGov)
The online system takes one digital upload — a square image, 600 × 600 to 1200 × 1200 px, 54 KB–10 MB. It accepts JPEG, PNG, HEIC, and HEIF.
US visa (DS-160) and DV Lottery
Same 2 × 2 square, but JPEG only and 240 KB maximum. An iPhone HEIC has to be converted to a true JPEG first, or the upload fails.
Green card and USCIS forms
US ID photos — green card, work authorisation, naturalisation — use the same 2 × 2 inch square specification.
Infant and child passports
Children under 16 need their own passport photo — the same 2 × 2 size, with relaxed rules on expression and eyes.
Need the square-format math, or another country that uses 2 × 2? See Passport Photo 2×2 Inch. Shooting on an iPhone for a DS-160 or DV entry? Convert HEIC to JPG gets you a portal-ready JPEG first.
Why Sukat for US passport photos
Five things this tool gets right that most "passport photo online" sites get wrong.
Hits the exact KB cap
A DS-160 or DV Lottery photo must come in under 240 KB, and a phone photo is 3–8 MB. Generic resizers make you guess a quality percentage. Sukat reverses that — type 240 KB and the algorithm finds the highest quality that still fits, so the upload doesn't bounce.
The exact square crop
Every US digital submission must be a perfect 1:1 square between 600 × 600 and 1200 × 1200 px — an 800 × 801 image is auto-rejected for being off-square. Sukat crops to an exact square at the right pixel size.
iPhone HEIC to JPEG where it's needed
Online passport renewal accepts HEIC and HEIF, but the DS-160 visa and DV Lottery portals take JPEG only — a renamed HEIC won't pass. Sukat exports a clean, valid JPEG so an iPhone photo is portal-ready.
White background, the safe way
Since 1 January 2026 the State Department rejects AI-edited photos, including AI background swaps and skin smoothing. Cropping, resizing, and setting a plain white background are formatting steps and stay fine — but for the passport, the safest route is a genuine white wall, with Sukat handling crop, size, and compression.
Standard sRGB output
Sukat re-encodes through the browser's canvas, which outputs a standard sRGB JPEG — sidestepping the Display P3 colour-profile rejection that catches many iPhone “Pro” shots.