How to print a passport photo at home or at a store

Our tool gives you two files for a printed document: the single photo at the authority's size and a print sheet that tiles it on 4 x 6 in, A4 or US Letter paper with cut marks and a printed ruler. This guide covers printing that sheet at exact size on a home printer or at a store kiosk, checking the result, and the countries where a home print is refused no matter how good it looks. We do not mail prints or send orders to stores; you print the sheet yourself.

Woman sitting on a bedroom floor in front of a camera on a tripod

What is on the sheet

The sheet is laid out at 300 DPI with 2 mm gutters between photos, a cut mark at every corner and a footer band holding a ruler and a caption. A 35 x 45 mm photo, the size used by the UK printed passport and 77 other documents in our dataset, fits 4 times on a 4 x 6 in sheet, 25 times on A4 and 28 times on Letter. The 2 x 2 in US passport photo fits twice on 4 x 6 and 15 times on A4 or Letter. Canada's 50 x 70 mm passport photo fits twice on 4 x 6 and 10 times on A4.

The ruler line is exactly 50 mm (2 in on inch papers). It is there so you can prove the print came out at 100 percent: if the line measures anything else, the printer scaled the page and every photo on it is the wrong size.

Hand holding two United States passports with boarding passes tucked inside

Printing on a home printer

A home print is fine for the US passport, where the State Department asks for photo-quality paper at exactly 2 x 2 inches and says plain office paper is rejected. The steps below are the ones we show with the download; the printer settings walkthrough covers each dialog in more depth, and the ruler check verifies the result.

1.Open the print sheet file (the JPEG whose name contains 'sheet') on the computer connected to your printer.
2.In the print dialog choose Actual size or 100% scaling and turn borderless printing OFF. Never pick 'Fit to page'.
3.Use glossy or matte photo paper, not office paper. Pick the paper size that matches the sheet you downloaded.
4.After printing, measure the ruler line with a real ruler. If it is not exactly 50 mm / 2 in, your printer scaled the page: print again with scaling off.
5.Cut along the marks; the gaps between photos are there for the scissors.

Printing at a store in the United States

Walgreens, CVS and Walmart all print a plain 4 x 6 in photo ($0.39 at Walgreens, checked 2026-10-11), usually ready for pickup within an hour. Upload the 4 x 6 sheet to the store's photo site or app as a normal 4 x 6 print. If the site offers cropping or 'fit to page', choose 'do not crop' so the photos keep their exact size.

Some branches refuse anything called a passport photo and insist on taking their own. Order the file as a regular 4 x 6 print, say nothing about passports, and cut along the marks yourself. Customers of other services report exactly this refusal, so do not be surprised by it.

Compact desktop printer on a shelf above a desk

Printing at a kiosk in the United Kingdom

Boots, Tesco and Asda have self-service photo kiosks. Copy the sheet to a USB stick or your phone, choose a 6 x 4 in print (the kiosk may call it 10 x 15 cm) and keep the sheet whole: no crop, no fit to page. Turn off any auto-enhance or colour-correction option the kiosk offers, then cut along the marks with scissors or a guillotine.

HM Passport Office accepts home prints for the printed UK passport photo only if they match booth or studio quality, and it refuses glossy or textured paper. Its guidance says photos printed at home are not usually clear enough for facial biometrics, so a lab or kiosk print on medium or low gloss or matt paper is the safer route.

Countries that refuse a home print

Some authorities judge who printed the photo, not just how it looks. Canada says passport photos must be taken in person by a commercial photographer and professionally printed, and that it does not accept photos printed at home or on heavyweight paper. For the Canadian passport take our file to a photo lab counter rather than a self-service kiosk, ask for the sheet printed at exact size with no cropping or resizing, and ask the lab to stamp or write its name, address and the date of the photo on the back of each print.

Australia requires dye-sublimation prints on heavyweight glossy paper of at least 200 gsm for the Australian passport; an inkjet print, even on photo paper, is explicitly not accepted, so use a lab or pharmacy kiosk. India's Passport Seva says a photograph in computer print will not be accepted for the Indian passport, so print on photo paper at a lab. Turkey rejects copies and home print-outs for the Turkish passport and wants the 50 x 60 mm print made at a photo counter.

Anywhere else

Take the sheet to any photo lab or photo counter and ask for it printed at exact size on photo paper. Make sure they do not crop, resize or 'fit to page' the sheet, then cut along the marks. Check the ruler line before you leave the counter: a 50 mm line that measures 48 mm means the whole sheet is 4 percent small, and a 35 x 45 mm photo has become 33.6 x 43.2 mm.