I need a 50×50 mm, 600×600 pixel (digital) picture for my passport. What the hell does that mean? If I’m looking at it on my pc I can make it 50×50. But if I open it in my phone it’ll be 5×5, if I open it in a bigger monitor it’ll be 100×100. How do I know what display they’ll be looking at it on?
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If you right click the image in say, Windows explorer, it’ll say how many pixels it is (500 x 300 for example). This doesn’t change.
Honestly, this is just a bad misunderstanding from the people who set the requirements.
For *digital* pictures, all that matters is the pixel size (in your example, 600×600). A 600×600 pixel image can be “resized” to basically *any* physical size in the 1:1 aspect ratio, and it’s the exact same image. There is no good reason for them to tell you that your digital image needs to have any specific size in mm.
That said, digital images *may* have a “flag” in them that sets a physical size, such as “pixels per inch” in the US or “pixels per cm” in metric countries.
It sounds like they *want* a 600×600 pixel image that is set to be 50x50mm, because it is flagged to print at 120pixels/cm. If you open the image in Photoshop (or similar), you can “resize” the image to 50x50mm, without changing the 600×600 pixels. Then send it off to the passport authority, and just be mad at them for setting a stupid requirement.
EDIT: And if it’s actually *you* who has misunderstood the requirements, and you are really submitting a 50x50mm *printed* picture (that you will print from a digital image), then the requirement just means “please make sure that the 50x50mm printed picture came from an image that was *at least* 600×600 pixels. In other words, if you take, say, a group photo in which your face is just a tiny speck, then try to crop your face out, you will likely land up with less than the required number of pixels, and your picture will be rejected as too blurry/grainy.
Simply resize it to 600 x 600 pixels in a painting program. Then set the print resolution to 12 pixels/mm. 300 DPI (dots-per-inch) would probably be close enough too.
I think you’re mixing up 2 different meanings of pixel. When we talk about a screen we talk about pixel density, how many points of color a screen can render in an inch. This changes from screen to screen and I believe this is why you think the number of pixels of an image is arbitrary. But when we talk about pixels in an image we are talking about something different. A pixel based image format (jpeg, png, gif …) is a file that contains a list of colors. Literally inside a 600×600 png is a list that’s like red, red, red, yellow, yellow, pink and so on for 360,000 entries. When you open this file on a screen, how many screen pixels are allocated for each image pixel is dependent on the screen and the scale of the image. No matter how big or small you display it, the file is the same, which is why if you scale it up too far it will no longer render correctly and will look grainy or “pixelated”
As someone else said, you’re overthinking it.
For a U.S. passport application, you provide a 2″x2″ (50.8mm x 50.8mm) physical photograph—not a digital file, but an actual color photo print which you can hold in your hand.
Most people just go somewhere which takes passport photos (Walmart, AAA, FedEx Office, etc.). They take a proper photo of you, you pay some money, and they give you the correctly sized print.
If you like, you can print your own digital photo, as long as it is square and meets the other requirements (white background, well lit, etc.). When you print it, you will tell the printer to make it be 2″x2″.
If the file is smaller than 600×600, it will look too fuzzy when printed at 2″x2″. If it’s larger than 600×600, that’s fine, your printer will figure out how to scale it down.
The image file itself has its own dimensions, which are different from the size of your screen.
The pixels are the important part for a digital image. 600×600 is 600 pixels wide, and 600 pixels tall. The 50x50mm only becomes important when you’re printing the image.
You can check the dimensions of your image:
If you’re on PC, you can right-click the image and view its Properties. It should tell you the image’s dimensions in the Details tab.
If you’re on mobile, it depends. Usually there’s a menu button that looks like three dots. There should be a Details option in there which will tell you the dimensions.
If you only want to use a small portion of the image *(just your head for instance)*, you can crop it in an image editor.
If your image is too small or too large or is the wrong shape, you can use an image editor to resize it or crop it to what you need.
*This is the end of the ELI5 part of my comment. After this point you’ll find more detail on how to actually make these edits.*
Most phones come with an image editor built-in. There’s usually a pencil icon that’ll take you there. I can’t vouch for the features it has; all phones are different. If yours can’t do it and you need to edit the image on your phone, you can find more image editors on your phone’s app store.
If you’re on Windows and don’t have an editor, I personally recommend something like [PaintDotNet](https://www.getpaint.net/download.html#download); it’s free, and it’ll get the job done well. There are loads of alternatives too. These instructions are for PaintDotNet.
If you have a big image of more than just your face, and you only want a smaller portion of it, you can use the Rectangle Select tool. After you select the tool, across the top of the screen, there should be a bar with a bunch of tool options in it. You can change from Normal mode to Aspect Ratio mode, set Aspect Ratio to 1 by 1, and it will give you a perfect square when you drag a rectangle over the image. After you’re happy with the square, you can use Image -> Crop to make it the new image.
If your image is already just your face, but it isn’t square, you can use Image -> Canvas Size to cut off the edges of the image. Use the little squares to set the anchor point to the center. Turn off “preserve aspect ratio”. Find the larger value between width and height, and lower it to the same value as the other.
If your image is too small, you can use Image -> Resize to make sure that the width and height are both at least 600. Turn on “preserve aspect ratio”. Find the smaller value between width and height, if they’re not the same. Raise that value to 600.
If your image is way too big, you can use the same options to make it smaller, as long as it’s still at least 600×600.
*(I say “at least 600” a lot here; if they want an image that is exactly 600×600, you’ll want to be sure you’ve done exactly 600.)*
When you’re done with the image, you can use File -> Save As to save it as a new copy and leave the original intact.
Unless they need a specific format for your passport, I recommend saving as a JPEG or JPG file; the file will take up less space on your hard drive, and will be quicker to send or transfer around.
If you care about maximum quality, use can save as PNG instead if they allow it. The file will take up more space on your hard drive and may be slower to send or transfer, but the original quality of the image will be preserved.
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