100% on-device
China visa photo, made in your browser
The 33 × 48 mm the Chinese visa centres ask for, with the margins they actually state — and, separately, the 354 × 472 px file the online form wants, which is not that photo resized. You get both.
The rule this document is failed for
China measures the margins — and it measures your hair.
Most standards constrain one thing — how tall your head is — and let the crop float. China constrains three: the head is 28–33 mm tall, but there must ALSO be 3–5 mm between the top of your head and the top edge, and at least 7 mm between your chin and the bottom edge. A tool that only solves head height can put a perfectly sized head in the wrong place and fail all the same. This one reads those published margins straight out of the standard and positions the crop from them, rather than centring by eye. And then there is the measurement itself. Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia and Japan all follow ICAO, which measures the head as if you had NO HAIR. China does not: its own digital rule says 头顶发迹 — the top-of-head hairline — and it even permits hair that stands too high to be cropped off at the top edge. Measure a Chinese photo to the skull, as almost every guide implicitly does, and a person with any volume in their hair ends up with 34 mm of measured head against a 33 mm limit. The size is its own trap on top of all that: 33 × 48 mm is used by nobody else, so a photo left over from a European or American application is not reusable here, however good it looks.
The specification, in numbers
- Photo size
- 33 × 48 mm
- Head height
- 28–33 mm, measured to the top of your HAIR
- Head as a share of the frame
- 58–69%
- Background
- White or near-white, with no border.
- Printed at 300 DPI
- 390 × 567 px
- Copies on one 10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) print
- 8 (4 × 2)
- Online — the COVA visa form
- a different frame from the print — crop it inside the form (354 × 472 to 420 × 560 px, 40 KB–120 KB)
- Background colour the tool paints
-
#ffffff— only if you tick the background box, which is off by default.
Applying online? That is a different photo.
The online visa form takes a 3:4 frame — this tool exports it at 354 × 472 px, the size the rules are written at — JPEG, 24-bit colour, 40–120 KB. It is NOT the print rescaled: COVA measures your face’s width (205 ± 14 px) and your eye line, where the print measures your head’s height, so it is solved as a second crop from its own landmarks. The eye line outranks the crown margin when they cannot both hold — China says so itself, and permits hair that stands too high to be cropped at the top edge.
From the form's own rules, last read on 2026-07-14.
What China visa / passport asks for
- China uses its own size — 33 × 48 mm. It is neither the 35 × 45 mm standard nor the US square.
- Head 28–33 mm tall (chin to the top of the head) and 15–22 mm wide.
- China measures to the TOP OF YOUR HAIR, not to the skull — the opposite of the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia and Japan, and the same as the US. Its digital rule literally says “头顶发迹” (the top-of-head hairline) and allows tall hair to be cropped off at the top edge. Aim the top line at your hairstyle, not through it.
- The margins are stated explicitly: 3–5 mm from the top of the head to the top edge, and at least 7 mm from the chin to the bottom edge. A tool that only solves head height can still fail this.
- Ears must be visible. Head tilt no more than 20° sideways or 25° up/down.
- Glasses are allowed, but not thick-rimmed, tinted or reflective ones.
- Must be printed on GLOSSY paper — matte prints are explicitly rejected.
- THE ONLINE FORM IS A DIFFERENT PICTURE, AND IT IS MEASURED DIFFERENTLY. COVA takes a 3:4 frame (354 × 472 px), which 33 × 48 mm is not, and it constrains your face’s WIDTH (205 ± 14 px) and your EYE LINE — where the print constrains your head’s height. The two crops cannot be derived from each other, so this tool solves them separately and gives you both files.
Every figure above comes from Chinese Visa Application Service Centre, last read on 2026-07-13. These rules do change; if you are reading this long after that date, spend a minute on the source page.
How it works
- Drop in a photo. It is read straight into this tab. There is no upload.
- Mark three points — the top of your head, your chin, the middle of your face. From those the crop is fully determined: the scale comes from the head height China visa / passport demands, the position from where it wants the crown. You do not pan or zoom anything.
- Download the single 33 × 48 mm photo, or the print sheet with all 8 copies on it.
Questions
Why is my photo not 35 × 45 mm?
Because China does not use 35 × 45 mm. It publishes its own 33 × 48 mm — narrower and taller. If a shop hands you a 35 × 45 mm print for a Chinese visa, it has given you the wrong photo.
Matte or glossy paper?
Glossy. The requirement is explicit, and matte prints are named as rejected — an unusually specific rule that is easy to fall foul of, since most home printers and many labs default to matte.
Can I wear glasses?
Thin frames are tolerated, but not thick-rimmed, tinted or reflective ones — and nothing may obscure the eyes. Your ears must be visible, and your head must not be tilted more than about 20° sideways.
What about the photo I upload to the online visa form?
This page makes that one too — as a SEPARATE file, because it is a separate picture. The online form (COVA) takes a 3:4 frame, which 33 × 48 mm is not, so nothing here is ever rescaled from the print into it. The deeper reason the two cannot be rescaled into each other is that they do not measure the same thing: the printed photo is specified by how TALL your head is, while COVA is specified by how WIDE your face is (205 ± 14 px), where your EYE LINE sits, and how much room is above your hair. You cannot compute a face’s width from a head’s height without assuming how that head is proportioned — and heads differ, which is why this tool asks you to mark two extra points on a Chinese photo and on no other, then solves the second crop from them. You end up with both files: the exact print, and a 354 × 472 px upload sitting inside COVA’s 40–120 KB window.
Why is the top of my hair cut off in the online version?
Because China told it to be, and this is the one piece of the standard nobody expects. COVA wants your eyes at least 256 pixels above the bottom edge AND 10–70 pixels of space above your head — and for anyone with volume in their hair those two cannot both be true at once. Rather than leave it to chance, the government published the tiebreak itself: keep the eyes where they belong, and “in special cases, hair standing too high may be partially cropped away”. So the tool holds the eye line and lets the hair go over the top edge, exactly as instructed, and tells you when it has. Do look at the preview and check it is only hair being cut — the tool marks the top of your hairstyle and cannot tell hair from skull.
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
It is not uploaded — and that is a fact of how the tool is built, not a promise in a privacy policy. There is no upload endpoint. The photo is read straight into this browser tab and cropped by code running on your own machine; you can pull out your Wi-Fi halfway through and it will still finish. Given that a passport photo is your face attached to a government form, that is the only honest way to build this.
How do I get it printed?
Download the print sheet and hand it to any photo lab as an ordinary 10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) print — it costs small change and comes back on real photo paper with the cut guides on it. If you print at home, print at 100% scale and never “fit to page”: that quietly rescales the sheet and makes every millimetre on it wrong.
Other documents
The same tool knows all of them — pick one from the dropdown above, or start from its own page: