How do I make a passport photo online for free?

Take a selfie against a white wall, upload it to our passport photo maker, and it automatically resizes to official 2x2 inch US passport size. Print it at home or at any pharmacy.

Can I print passport photos at home?

Yes. Our tool formats your photo to fit on a 4x6 inch printout with multiple copies. Print it at home on photo paper for 10 cents instead of paying $15 at CVS.

Are online passport photos accepted?

As long as they meet official requirements (2x2 inch, white background, neutral expression, no glasses), they're accepted. Just make sure you follow the official rules.

Free Passport Photo Maker Online (No Upload, No Appointment)

Published: September 15, 2026 · 6 min read

Paying $15 for passport photos at CVS or Walgreens is a rip-off. You can take your own passport photo at home, resize it to the exact official size, and print it at home for 10 cents. Our free passport photo maker does all this right in your browser — no upload, no appointment, no waiting in line.

How to Make a Passport Photo at Home

Take a selfie against a plain white wall (use natural light from a window, no shadows on your face).
Upload the photo to our passport photo maker.
The tool automatically crops and resizes it to the official 2x2 inch (51x51mm) US passport size.
It formats the photo to fit 6 copies on a standard 4x6 inch printout.
Download the final image, print it on glossy photo paper at home, or take it to any pharmacy to print for 10 cents.

Your photo never gets uploaded to a server. All processing happens locally on your device, so your personal photo stays private.

Official Passport Photo Requirements (US)

Size: 2x2 inches (51x51mm)
Background: Plain white or off-white, no patterns
Expression: Neutral face, mouth closed, looking directly at the camera
Glasses: No glasses (even prescription ones, unless you have a medical reason)
Head coverings: Only for religious reasons, and your entire face must be visible
Shadows: No shadows on your face or behind you

Our tool automatically checks that your photo meets these requirements, and tells you if anything needs to be fixed.

How to Take a Good Passport Photo at Home

Stand 6 feet from the wall: This avoids shadows on the wall behind you.
Use natural light: Stand facing a window, with light coming from in front of you. No overhead lights — they create shadows under your eyes.
Take the photo at eye level: Don't hold the phone above your head — hold it at eye level, straight on.
Use the timer: Set the phone timer to 10 seconds so you can stand back and frame yourself correctly.
Wear dark clothes: Against a white background, dark clothes look better and don't blend in.

Printing Your Passport Photo at Home

Our tool formats your photo to fit 6 passport photos on a single 4x6 inch printout. Print this on glossy photo paper (the same kind you use for family photos) at home, or save it to your phone and print it at any pharmacy for 10 cents. Cut out the individual photos with scissors, and you're done.

Don't print on regular printer paper — it's too thin, and the background won't be pure white. Use glossy photo paper for best results.

Common Mistakes

Smiling: US passport photos require a neutral expression, no smile. If you smile, your photo will get rejected.
Wearing glasses: Even prescription glasses are not allowed in US passport photos. Take them off for the photo.
Shadows on the face: If you use overhead lighting, you'll have shadows under your eyes and chin. Use front-facing natural light instead.
Printing on plain paper: Regular printer paper has a yellowish tint, and the background won't be pure white. Use glossy photo paper.
Uploading photos to random online tools: Most online passport photo tools upload your photo to their server. Our tool runs locally, so your personal photo never leaves your device.

Make Your Passport Photo Free →

Why local processing matters for passport photos

Most free online passport photo tools ask you to upload your photo to their servers to process it — that means your biometric portrait, a picture of your face that's used to verify your identity for border control, gets stored on a random third-party server somewhere. You have no idea who runs that service, how long they keep your photo, who they sell it to, or if it gets leaked in a data breach. Passport photos are sensitive personal information: your face, your age, your likeness, all in a high-resolution image that's perfect for identity theft or deepfake training. When the tool processes your photo entirely in your browser, that image data never leaves your laptop or phone at all — there's no upload request sent to any server, even if you disconnect your internet after loading the page, the cropping and formatting still works. That's the level of privacy you should expect when you're handling official identity documents, and it's why local processing isn't just a nice feature, it's the minimum bar for a tool that handles your face.

Printing at home is cheaper, but there are a couple of small details people miss. First, make sure your printer settings are set to "actual size" or "100% scale," not "fit to page" or "scale to fill." If you accidentally let the printer scale the image to fit the paper, your 2x2 inch photo will come out 1.9 inches or 2.1 inches, which is outside the acceptable tolerance, and the passport office will reject it. Second, set your paper type to "glossy photo paper" in the printer settings, not plain paper — this tells the printer to use the right ink density, so the white background comes out pure white instead of slightly gray. If you don't have a photo printer at home, just save the 4x6 composite image to your phone and send it to the kiosk at CVS, Walgreens, or any pharmacy that prints 4x6 photo prints. It costs 10-30 cents, and you get the same glossy print you'd get if you paid $15 for their in-store passport photo service, the only difference is you took the picture yourself.

One thing that catches a lot of people off guard: the head height requirement. The US State Department requires your head (from the top of your hair to the bottom of your chin) to measure between 1 and 1 and 3/8 inches on the final 2x2 inch photo. Most people take a selfie from too far away, so their head comes out too small in the frame, and the photo gets rejected even if the background is white and the expression is neutral. The tool automatically crops your photo to meet this head height rule, but when you're taking the original shot, stand about arm's length from your phone, make sure the frame cuts off right above your shoulders, and you'll end up with the right proportions. If you're not sure, take a few shots at different distances, and use the one where your face takes up roughly two-thirds of the frame.

At the end of the day, the $15 passport photo price at pharmacies is just a huge markup for something you can do perfectly well at home in 5 minutes. The pharmacy employee isn't using any special equipment — they're just taking a photo against a white wall, cropping it to 2x2, and printing it on the same glossy photo paper you can buy at any dollar store. There's no magic to the process, and the passport office doesn't care if the photo was taken at CVS or in your living room, as long as it meets the official requirements. Taking the photo yourself saves you time, saves you money, and means you can retake the shot as many times as you want until you look exactly how you want to look on your passport for the next 10 years — instead of settling for a rushed, awkward photo taken by a pharmacy employee who doesn't care how it turns out.