US Visa Photo 2 × 2 Inches: Making the 600 × 600 File at Home

The short answer

A US visa photo is a square. On paper it is 2 × 2 inches. As a file, it is a JPEG from 600 × 600 to 1200 × 1200 pixels, no heavier than 240 kB. Aim for 600 × 600: the State Department's own photo tool crops “to a square image of exactly 600 x 600 pixels”.

From a phone photo, it takes two steps. Cut a square around your head in Crop Image, then scale it to 600 pixels in Resize Image. Both are free, need no sign-up and run inside the browser tab: the photo is not sent to our server.

The tools handle shape, size and weight. Pose, background and light are yours to check, and the embassy or consulate decides on acceptance, not us. The last section turns those checks into pixel numbers.

What the State Department asks for

The quotes come from the State Department's photo pages on travel.state.gov, checked on October 20, 2026. Rules change, so read the live pages before you apply.

The file must be square. “Minimum acceptable dimensions are 600 x 600 pixels. Maximum acceptable dimensions are 1200 x 1200 pixels.” It must be “in color (24 bits per pixel) in sRGB color space”, a JPEG, and “less than or equal to 240 kB (kilobytes).” One line is easy to miss: “The compression ratio should be less than or equal to 20:1.”

From the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin, the head “must be between 50% and 69% of the image's total height.” The eyes go between 56% and 69% of the height, measured from the bottom. A printed photo must be “2 inches by 2 inches”.

The general list asks for a photo “Taken within the last 6 months” and a “plain white or off-white background”. It wants a neutral expression, both eyes open and no eyeglasses, except in rare medical cases. Photos “must not be digitally enhanced or altered to change your appearance in any way.” Acceptance is “at the discretion of the U.S. embassy or consulate where you apply.”

Why the 35 × 45 mm passport preset is the wrong shape

Resize Image has a passport photo preset: 413 × 531 pixels, which is 35 × 45 mm at 300 dpi. That format is a different shape from the US one.

We ran our test photo through it on October 20, 2026. It came back at 413 × 531 pixels and 47,602 bytes, with white strips 7 and 8 pixels wide at the sides. By default, the preset fits the whole photo into its frame and pads the gap. For a US visa, that misses three times: the file is not square, both sides are under 600 pixels, and the strips are padding, not background.

From a phone photo to 600 × 600, step by step

Our test photo was a 12-megapixel iPhone 6s shot of a mannequin head against a gray wall: 3024 × 4032 pixels, 1,783,300 bytes. A stand-in kept a real face out of the test.

Open Crop Image with 1:1 Square selected and drag the frame over your head, with some space above the hair and below the chin. Exact numbers go under “More settings”: X position, Y position, Width and Height. We typed 0, 400, 3024 and 3024, the widest square this photo holds. The crop came out at 3024 × 3024 and 1,292,575 bytes.

The row of tools under the Download JPG button takes the square on without a download. Choose Resize Image; the page says “Continuing with the file from your last step”. Under “Set size by”, pick Exact pixels, type 600 in Width and leave Lock aspect ratio on. The size above the picture should read 600 × 600.

Download JPG gave us a 600 × 600 file of 69,373 bytes. Each tool had its result ready in under two seconds, in Chromium on a Mac. Neither file carried EXIF data, so the capture date and camera model stayed behind.

The weight: under 240 kB, but not too light

Our 69,373 bytes are under a third of the limit. Opened in Compress Image, the file shows as 68 kB: the site counts a kilobyte as 1,024 bytes. Resize Image writes a new JPEG at quality 90.

The 20:1 rule sets a floor. At 24 bits per pixel, a 600 × 600 image holds 1,080,000 bytes of raw pixels, so 20:1 means at least 54,000 bytes. Ours came to 15.6:1. At 1200 × 1200, the floor is 216,000 bytes, close to the ceiling. The same square resized to 1200 weighed 224,717 bytes, inside the window with little to spare.

So do not compress a file that already fits. On its default level, Balanced, Compress Image took our 600 × 600 file to 25,681 bytes, about 42:1. Use Compress Image only for a file over 240 kB. Choose “To a size” and type 234 in Target size. Under “More settings”, switch off Allow resizing if needed, so the pixel size stays, then press Update result.

234 KB is 239,616 bytes, under 240 kB however a kilobyte is counted. A file already under the target comes back unchanged; ours did, byte for byte.

What to check before you send it

On a 600 × 600 file, the template's percentages become pixels. The head, from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin, should be 300 to 414 pixels tall. The eyes should sit 336 to 414 pixels above the bottom edge.

To measure, open the finished file in Crop Image, choose Free and drag the frame from the top of the hair to the chin. The size above the photo is the frame in pixels; the second number is the head height, and nothing needs downloading.

Our test file failed here. The head measured about 425 pixels, 71 percent of the height, though the square already used the photo's full width. No crop could fix that: the camera was too close. In a 3:4 portrait photo, keep the head under about 52 percent of the height, or no square brings it down to 69 percent.

The rest is for your eyes: a plain white or off-white background, a sharp face looking straight at the camera, both eyes open, no glasses. Our gray wall would fail on its own. The State Department's FAQ warns that “Most webcams and mobile phones cannot provide images of sufficient quality”, and its main photo page recommends a professional visa photo service.

Immigrant visa applicants also bring two identical prints, “2 x 2 inches (51 x 51 mm)”, on photo quality paper. Our files carried no print resolution, so set the print size to 2 × 2 inches yourself. 600 pixels across 2 inches is 300 pixels per inch.