Short answer first. Ask 412 e-visa records what they want and the photo is the second most demanded document on the list, behind only the passport scan itself: 264 of the 412 records in this site's collection (50 destinations, 11 nationalities) name a photo among the required documents. Then ask those same records how big the photo should be, and the room goes quiet: 32 state any size at all.
The requirement, counted
| What the record says | Records (of 412) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| A passport scan or bio page is required | 361 | 88% |
| A photo is among the required documents | 264 | 64% |
| The photo must be digital | 121 | 29% |
| A white background is specified | 51 | 12% |
| Any photo size is stated at all | 32 | 8% |
| No photo is listed | 148 | 36% |
The gap between the first row and the last is the whole story of visa photo rejections. A requirement stated on 264 records is specified down to a size on 32 of them. The rest leave the dimensions to the application form, the embassy page, or the applicant's optimism, which is how a photo that looked fine on a phone screen becomes the reason an application stalls. Our explainer on what photo checkers verify covers the background, lighting and face-share checks that sit behind the size question.
The sizes that cover the map
Six published presets cover most of what the 264 records are asking for, and they are the working set in the free Visa Photo Maker: the US and India at 51 by 51 mm (600 by 600 pixels, white background), Schengen and the UK and Canada at 35 by 45 mm (413 by 531), and China at 33 by 48 mm (390 by 567). Dedicated tools for a single country's spec, like the USCIS photo tool this article's format follows, exist because the US window is its own puzzle; for most other destinations the preset and a plain background settle it. The 148 records that list no photo are not a loophole: they are mostly routes where the photo is taken at the border or not part of the e-visa file at all.
Sources: tool format modeled on PhotoAiD, USCIS Photo Tool. All counts from this site's e-visa records collection (412 records), harvested from its public search index November 5, 2026. Presets from the Visa Photo Maker's published settings.