Passport Size Photo Size in cm, mm, Inches and Pixels

In India, a passport size photo is 3.5 cm wide and 4.5 cm tall: 35 × 45 mm, or about 1.38 × 1.77 inches, always in portrait orientation. It has no fixed size in pixels. At 300 dpi it is 413 × 531 px, but an online form that names its own pixel window or KB limit overrides any conversion. Passport Seva states the size height first (4.5 × 3.5 cm), while the GATE and CTET notices state it width first (3.5 × 4.5 cm). It is the same photo either way.

3.5 × 4.5 cm in every unit

Inches are rounded to two decimals and pixels to the nearest whole pixel. Every row is the same 7 : 9 rectangle, so a picture cropped to that shape scales to any of these sizes without stretching the face. Passport Seva’s ICAO photo for Indian missions abroad, 630 × 810 px, has that shape too: it is 3.5 × 4.5 cm at 457.2 dpi.

Which way round: 4.5 × 3.5 or 3.5 × 4.5?

Both mean one upright rectangle. Passport Seva gives the length first: its instruction booklet wants a photo 4.5 cm long and 3.5 cm wide on paper applications, and its Apply guide writes 4.5 X 3.5 cm for children under 4. The exam notices cited here give the width first; GATE 2027 asks for “3.5 cm width × 4.5 cm height”. Whichever order you see, the 4.5 cm side runs from top to bottom.

What a passport size photo in India is not: a 2 × 2 inch square. That 51 × 51 mm format belongs to the US passport and visa, and a 7 : 9 photo cannot become a square (or the reverse) without cropping it again.

Pixels and KB come from the form

A size in centimetres tells a printer what to do. An upload portal checks other things, namely pixel dimensions, file size in KB and file type, and every authority sets its own limits. Three published examples, all for a photo of the same 3.5 × 4.5 cm shape:

Three things follow:

• One file rarely fits every portal. A 300 dpi file of 413 × 531 px sits inside GATE’s window, while the 630 × 810 px mission photo is larger than GATE’s 530 × 690 px maximum and has to be scaled down first.
• KB depends on compression, not on centimetres. The same pixels saved at a different JPEG quality give a different file size, so check the saved file against your notice’s KB window rather than judging by its dimensions.
• The crop differs as well. GATE wants the face to fill 60–70% of the frame; Passport Seva’s ICAO guideline wants 80–85%. Re-crop from the original for each form instead of reusing one file.

CTET’s bulletin gives the photo’s dimension in centimetres, not pixels. An image’s size in centimetres is its pixel count divided by the dpi saved in the file, so a 413 × 531 px JPEG saved at 300 dpi measures 3.5 × 4.5 cm. Notices change with each exam cycle; the table shows how much they differ, not what your form wants.

Convert a size yourself

The converter starts at the 35 mm width at 300 dpi. Enter 45 for the height, change the dpi, or switch to px to see how large a pixel count from your notice would print.

Printing passport size photos

A 4 × 6 inch photo print (about 102 × 152 mm) holds eight 35 × 45 mm photos in two rows of four, with about a centimetre to spare in each direction for cutting. PassportPhoto’s free in-browser maker crops a phone photo to the passport shape, lays out that eight-photo sheet, and exports the 630 × 810 px file for missions abroad. If the print is going on a paper passport application, Passport Seva’s booklet refuses computer prints and asks for good-quality photo paper, so order it from a photo lab. Measure one photo before cutting the rest: 35 mm across, 45 mm high.

Passport size vs stamp size

A “stamp size” photo is smaller and has no national standard. The Election Commission of India specifies 2 × 2.5 cm for candidates’ ballot-paper photos, which is under a third of the area of a passport size photo and a squarer 4 : 5 shape. Stamp size photo size converts it and explains why a passport size print can’t simply be trimmed down.

Sources

Related: India passport photo by channel · pixel sizes for every country · stamp size photo · how to read a spec sheet.