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Passport renewal photo: what the file has to be
A renewal photo gets refused for two different kinds of reason: the picture itself (background, glasses, expression) or the file (dimensions, format, size). This page is about the file — the part that is pure arithmetic and that you can fix in a minute.
The short answer. Square, at least 600×600 and at most 1200×1200 pixels, in colour, taken in the last six months, and the file between 54 KB and 10 MB. Online renewal accepts JPG, JPEG, PNG, HEIC and HEIF.
The file specification
| What | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Shape | Square — width and height identical |
| Minimum size | 600 × 600 pixels |
| Maximum size | 1200 × 1200 pixels |
| File size | Between 54 KB and 10 MB |
| Colour | Colour, not black and white |
| Age of photo | Taken within the last 6 months |
| Accepted formats | JPG, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF (online renewal) |
Checked against the State Department’s online renewal guidance in August 2026. Requirements change without notice — confirm on the official site before a deadline-critical submission.
This is not the same as the DS-160 visa photo. The visa photo is stricter: JPEG only and under 240 KB. A file that passes passport renewal can still be refused by the visa form. Check which one you are actually filling in.
Two limits that catch people out
The 54 KB floor
Most rules are about files being too big. This one has a minimum: a photo under 54 KB has usually been compressed so hard that skin tone and edge detail are gone, and it cannot be checked reliably. If you have squeezed a photo to get it under some other limit, it can end up too small for this one.
The square crop
A phone photo is rectangular. Cropping to square is where the framing goes wrong: crop too tight and the head is oversized, too loose and the face is too small. Crop for the head, then resize the result — not the other way round.
The order that works
- Photograph against a plain white or off-white wall, in daylight, no flash and no hat.
- Crop to a square with the head centred and the shoulders visible.
- Resize to somewhere between 600×600 and 1200×1200. Going straight to 600×600 leaves no margin if you have to re-crop.
- Export as JPEG and check the file lands between 54 KB and 10 MB.
- Keep it in colour — a greyscale conversion is an automatic rejection.
Resize a photo to the exact passport file spec
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