100% on-device
US visa & green-card-lottery photo
The 2 × 2 inch photo the visa forms want — exported at exactly 600 × 600 pixels, which is what the upload checks. No upload to us, no sign-up; the photo is cropped on your own machine.
The rule this document is failed for
The visa form rejects files, not faces.
A visa photo has to survive an automated check before a human ever sees it, and that check is about digits: the image must be square, JPEG, between 600 × 600 and 1200 × 1200 pixels, and no larger than 240 KB. The green-card lottery is notorious for exactly this — entries thrown out for a photo that was fine to look at and wrong to parse. The happy accident is that two inches at 300 DPI is 600 × 600 px, so a print-correct photo and an upload-correct photo are the same file here, and this tool produces it by default. The head rules still bite too: like the US passport, it measures to the top of your HAIR, and the eyes must sit in the upper-middle band of the frame rather than dead centre.
The specification, in numbers
- Photo size
- 50.8 × 50.8 mm (2 × 2 in)
- Head height
- 25.4–34.9 mm, measured to the top of your HAIR
- Head as a share of the frame
- 50–69%
- Background
- Plain white or off-white.
- Printed at 300 DPI
- 600 × 600 px
- Copies on one 10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) print
- 6 (3 × 2)
- Online — the DS-160 upload
- 600 × 600 px, up to 240 KB — the tool exports this file for you
- 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.
Digital upload: 600 × 600 to 1200 × 1200 px, square, JPEG, 24-bit sRGB, 240 KB maximum, compression no tighter than 20:1. Unlike the passport renewal, this form takes the finished square crop — the head and eye heights are rules about the uploaded image itself.
From the form's own rules, last read on 2026-07-13.
What US visa / Green Card lottery asks for
- Same 2 × 2 in photo as the passport, but the visa system states extra digital rules the passport one does not.
- Head 25–35 mm (50–69% of image height), measured to the top of the hair.
- Eyes must sit 1⅛–1⅜ in (28–35 mm) up from the bottom edge — 56–69% of the image height.
- Glasses are no longer allowed except for rare medical reasons.
- The Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) is stricter than the DS-160: it demands EXACTLY 600 × 600 px, not the 600–1200 range. This tool exports exactly 600 × 600, so one file satisfies both.
Every figure above comes from US Department of State — visa photo composition template, 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 US visa / Green Card lottery demands, the position from where it wants the crown. You do not pan or zoom anything.
- Download the single 50.8 × 50.8 mm photo, or the print sheet with all 6 copies on it.
Questions
Is this the right photo for the DV (green card) lottery?
Yes, and the lottery is the stricter of the two in a way that is easy to miss. The DS-160 accepts anything from 600 × 600 to 1200 × 1200 px; the Diversity Visa entry demands EXACTLY 600 × 600. A 1000 × 1000 file is valid for the visa form and invalid for the lottery. This tool exports exactly 600 × 600 — two inches at print resolution simply is that — so a single file satisfies both, and there is no setting to get wrong.
Will the file be under the 240 KB limit?
Yes, and now by design rather than by luck. The tool encodes the upload file and checks its actual size against the 240 KB the form allows, stepping the JPEG quality down until it fits and telling you what it landed at. An ordinary photo comes out a fraction of the cap. The rule also has a floor hiding in it: the State Department caps compression at 20:1, which for a 600 × 600 24-bit image means the file may not fall below about 54 KB either — so the tool watches both ends, and it will never pad a file to fake the size.
Where do my eyes have to be?
Between 1⅛ and 1⅜ inches (28–35 mm) up from the bottom edge — 56–69% of the way up the picture. Because the crop here is solved from the chin and crown you mark, the eyes land in that band as a consequence of the head being the right height, rather than as a fourth thing for you to fiddle with.
Glasses?
Off. They have not been allowed since 2016 except for documented medical reasons.
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.
Other documents
The same tool knows all of them — pick one from the dropdown above, or start from its own page: