Sources, conflicts and gaps

The rules we follow

1. Official sources only. The issuing authority's own site — passport agency, interior ministry, immigration service, foreign ministry, exam board. Never a photo-shop site, never a visa agency, never an aggregator, never another tool's spec page.
2. No filling in the blanks. If a source states the print size but not the head height, the head height stays empty. Every spec page lists which fields were not published rather than quietly implying a number.
3. Conflicts are shown, not resolved. Where two official sources disagree, both appear with both links. Picking one silently would hide the fact that the authority's own documentation is inconsistent.
4. Unverified rows do not ship. 8 rows are held back and listed below with the reason.
5. No invented numbers of any kind. That includes traffic estimates, competitor figures and market sizes, none of which appear anywhere on this site.

Photo specs we could not verify

Figures for all of these circulate freely on commercial photo sites. None of them trace back to a readable official page, so nothing is published:

• Australia — passports.gov.au could not be read — every path returned a gateway block or a robots.txt timeout across repeated attempts from two different fetchers. Rather than copy figures from a third-party photo site, this row is held back. It needs to be filled in by reading passports.gov.au directly. Attempted source
• Bangladesh — epassport.gov.bd is a client-rendered application whose guidance text is not reachable by fetching. Foreign-ministry mission pages link back to it without restating any measurements, and dip.gov.bd returned an SSL error. Figures such as 35 × 45 mm or 45 × 55 mm circulate widely on commercial photo sites but none trace to an official page, so nothing is published here. Attempted source
• Nepal — No numeric specification is published on nepalpassport.gov.np. The Nepali embassy in Washington states that photographs are taken at the embassy on the day of the appointment, which suggests the e-passport process captures the photo biometrically rather than accepting a supplied print. That is worth knowing, but it is not a confirmed national rule, so no spec page ships. Attempted source
• Nigeria — The Nigeria Immigration Service confirms two passport-sized photographs are required and that biometric capture also happens in person, but publishes no size, background or file specification. The dedicated image-compliance page at passport.immigration.gov.ng is client-rendered and returned no readable content across repeated attempts, and the NIS FAQ page returns 404. Attempted source

Portal limits we could not verify

• IBPS — IBPS publishes scanning and uploading guidelines per recruitment cycle, but every located copy is a scanned image PDF rather than machine-readable text and could not be read. Figures around 200 × 230 px and 20–50 KB circulate on coaching and resizer sites; none trace to a readable official document, so nothing is published here. Read the guideline PDF linked from your own IBPS application page. Attempted source
• Passport Seva — There is no published KB or pixel limit because there is usually nothing to upload: the instruction booklet states a photograph is not required for applications submitted at a Passport Seva Kendra or Post Office PSK, where the photo is captured at the centre. A printed 4.5 × 3.5 cm photo applies only to the limited non-PSK route, and that is not a digital upload. Attempted source
• PAN Card — Protean's page states JPEG at 200 DPI with a 50 KB maximum, but gives photo dimensions as 5 cm × 2.5 cm, which contradicts the 3.5 × 2.5 cm size referenced elsewhere on the same domain for form-affixed photographs and looks like an error in the source. Because the dimension figure cannot be reconciled against a second official document, this row is held back rather than shipped with a number that may be wrong. Attempted source
• IRCC — IRCC's photograph specification page defines only printed requirements — a 35 × 45 mm frame with a 31–36 mm head — and says of digital photos merely that they must not be altered in any way. No KB, pixel or DPI figure for a digital upload is published, so none is invented here. For the Canadian passport digital spec, which is published, see the Canadian passport photo page. Attempted source

Specs from a secondary official source

For these, the issuing authority's own specification page could not be read — bot protection, an unparseable download, or content published only as an image. The figures come from a different official government source: an embassy, or a local-government mirror of the national standard. Each page carries a visible notice.

• Chinese Passport Photo — Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Australia
• Italian Passport Photo — Ministero degli Affari Esteri — Ambasciata d'Italia
• South Korean Passport Photo — Guri City Government — official mirror of the MOFA passport photo standard
• Thai Passport Photo — Department of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand — photo guideline

Where official sources disagree

• Schengen Visa Photo — Print width
• Singapore Passport Photo — File size and format
• Spanish Passport & DNI Photo — Print size
• Sri Lankan Passport Photo — Whether printed photos and the detailed mm figures still apply

Countries that photograph you at the appointment

Worth knowing before you spend time preparing a photo you cannot submit. For some of these it applies to every applicant; for others only to certain routes or age groups. The country page says which.

• Brazil
• Germany
• India
• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• Philippines
• Sri Lanka
• Sweden
• Thailand

Every source, listed

51 distinct URLs. All were read on the date shown. Links are marked nofollow — we are citing these, not trying to pass them ranking signals.

Found something wrong?

Corrections with an official link are the most useful thing anyone can send us — see the contact page. A specification that changed is not an embarrassment; a specification we refuse to fix would be.