About ID photo

ID photo takes a picture of you, cuts you out of it, puts you on a plain backdrop and frames your head to the size an ID or a passport asks for — one photo at 300 DPI, or as many copies as you ask for side by side in one picture, ready to print and cut.

The cut is Remove background’s: the subject model where the browser has WebGPU, and where it does not, a fill from the edges that works when the wall behind you is plain and close to one color. A plain wall is what an ID photo is taken against anyway, so the second way usually does the job; a busy room behind you does not come out cleanly by either.

The head is found from the outline of the cut-out, not from your face. The top of the outline is the crown, the outline is as wide as it gets at about the cheekbones, and chin to crown is taken as about 1.4 times that width. It is a guess from proportions — close on a straight-on portrait, off with big hair or a turned head — so Head size and Head position are there to put it right by eye before you print.

The three sizes follow their rules at the middle of the range they allow: on 2 × 2 in the head takes about 60% of the height, on 35 × 45 mm about three quarters, which is what most passport offices ask for. A JPG carries 300 DPI in its header, so it prints at its size rather than enlarged; a PNG does not, and a photo lab sizing it by hand is the usual answer.

It checks nothing an officer would: not your expression, not whether your eyes are open, not glasses or shadows. Look at the result against your own office’s rules before you hand it in.