The State Department publishes an exact digital spec for visa photos: a square JPEG between 600×600 and 1200×1200 pixels, 24-bit color in the sRGB color space, at most 240 kB (full sourced details in our requirements entry). Here is what each rule actually means, and why ordinary photos fail them.
“Square” is exact, not approximate
1200×1199 is not square. Phone cameras shoot 4:3 or 3:2, so nearly every photo needs a crop. Center-cropping yourself in a photo editor works; our Image Requirement Fixer does the crop, the resize and the size cap in one pass and shows you the resulting numbers.
240 kB is smaller than you think
A modern phone photo is 2–8 MB — ten to thirty times over. Getting under the cap without visible damage is about JPEG quality tuning at the right dimensions, not about saving repeatedly until it fits. The tool binary-searches the JPEG quality until the file fits the cap at your chosen dimensions.
The invisible failure: color space
The spec requires sRGB — the web's standard color space. iPhones capture in Display P3 (a wider gamut) by default. The photo looks identical to you, but its embedded profile says P3, and automated checks can fail it. Any process that re-draws the image through a standard browser canvas — which is how our tool works — outputs standard sRGB.
HEIC won't do
The spec says JPEG. iPhones save HEIC by default. Share/export the photo as JPEG first (or change the camera setting to “Most Compatible”), then fix dimensions and size.
What this page is not
Composition rules — head size, background, glasses, expression — are human/AI-reviewed requirements documented on the official State Department photo pages, and program-specific pages can add rules. This guide and our tool handle the file mechanics only; always review the official photo requirements for your specific application.