Compliance

International standards

The engine targets the ICAO 9303 portrait specification — the standard published by the International Civil Aviation Organization that governs machine-readable travel documents — and the closely-related ISO/IEC 19794-5 biometric face image standard. These define the accepted range for head height, eye line, pose, lighting uniformity, and background neutrality.

US document compliance

For US-issued documents (passport, visa DS-160, DV Lottery, green card, USCIS passport-style photos) the requirement source is the official US Department of State and USCIS guidance. Our compliance rubric mirrors those public requirements:

• 2 × 2 inch printed photo (600 × 600 px digital at 300 DPI)
• Head height between 1 and 1⅜ inches from chin to crown (50–69% of image height)
• Plain white or off-white background
• Neutral expression, mouth closed, eyes open and visible
• No filters, retouching, or AI changes that alter how you look

See /us-passport-photo for the dedicated US passport workflow.

Per-country overrides

Each of the 138 documents in our catalog ships with its own size specification, head ratio, background color, DPI requirement, and editing-policy rules pulled from public official sources. The pipeline reads the catalog at render time and produces output that matches the document's spec to the pixel.

For example: a 35 × 45 mm German passport photo renders at 413 × 531 px (300 DPI), while a 50 × 70 mm Canadian citizenship photo renders at 591 × 827 px. Browse the full catalog at /documents.

Editing policy by jurisdiction

Strict-no-edit countries (US, UK, Canada) skip background replacement and any pixel-level identity modification. Other jurisdictions allow background normalization when the source background is non-uniform; in those cases the SelfieSegmenter applies a scalp-extended mask and replaces only background pixels.

What we do not claim

• We are not affiliated with any government agency or issuing authority.
• Our compliance rubric is an aid, not a guarantee. The final acceptance decision rests with the agency, embassy, or consulate reviewing your application.
• We do not file forms, submit applications, or contact agencies on your behalf.
• We do not use AI to generate photos. The engine processes your uploaded source through deterministic image-processing primitives.