HMPO 'poor quality' rejections and what to change

HM Passport Office's online application checks every uploaded photo automatically and answers in plain, slightly alarming English: 'poor quality', 'reflections on face', 'your eyes seem to be closed', 'photo only fair therefore chance of rejection'. Some of these are advisory warnings you may continue past, and some describe faults worth fixing before you do. This guide maps each message to the gov.uk rule behind it and gives the decision rule for continuing versus re-shooting.

First: the check is advisory, the staff decide

The gov.uk upload can say the photo 'might not meet the rules' and still let you continue with the UK digital photo; HMPO staff make the final decision on every application. That design explains the whole message family: the automated check flags risk, it does not refuse. Continuing with a photo that genuinely meets the published rules is normally fine, and users report doing exactly that successfully. Our help entry tracks this message; the judgement call is whether the flagged fault is real.

'Poor quality' and 'photo only fair'

These map to sharpness, lighting and compression. gov.uk requires a photo that is clear and in focus, in colour, and unaltered by computer software, and warns that photos from a booth or shop are more likely to be approved than one taken on your own device, a sentence aimed squarely at dim indoor phone shots. If the photo is crisp at full zoom, evenly lit and straight off the camera, the warning is conservative and you can continue; if it is soft, grainy or dim, re-shoot by a window rather than editing, since brightening in software is itself a breach. The lighting guide covers the setup, and photo only fair documents the message.

'Reflections on face' and 'eyes seem to be closed'

Both usually trace to glasses. gov.uk's rule is that nothing may cover the eyes: no frames across them, no glare, reflection or shadow, and the automated check reads a lens reflection as a covered or closed eye, producing 'eyes seem to be closed' on people who were wide awake. The fixes, in order: take the glasses off, or kill the reflection with frontal light and no flash, as the glasses false-positives guide details. Without glasses, 'reflections on face' can also mean shine on skin from a close flash; shoot in daylight instead. See the help entries for reflections and eyes seem to be closed.

The rules people forget while debugging the message

Two UK rules are unusually strict and get missed in the retake frenzy. The photo must have been taken in the last month, the shortest recency rule in our dataset, so re-using the spring holiday photo fails even if every pixel is perfect. And the file must be the camera's own frame: HMPO crops it, so do not pre-crop to 35 x 45; keep head, shoulders and upper body in frame. For a paper application the printed photo has its own standards, including a refusal of glossy or textured paper.

Continue or re-shoot: the decision rule

Apply in order when a warning appears.

1.Zoom to 100 percent. Soft focus, grain or visible noise: re-shoot. The automated check is right about these more often than not.
2.Any streak or bright patch on a lens, or shadow across either eye: fix the light or remove the glasses, then re-shoot.
3.Photo older than a month, filtered, or pre-cropped: re-shoot; these are hard rules, not quality opinions.
4.Photo passes all of the above and your checklist's measured values sit inside the published rules: continue, and let the humans decide.

Sources

Last updated 2026-10-11

We are an independent service, not a government website. Applying for a passport or visa is done with your government; we only prepare the photo.