DIY Passport Photos

PC Magazine Article for DIY Passport Photos
(From the Februrary 20, 2007 issue, p. 24)

Doing your own passport photography isn't hard, if you know and adhere to the guidelines. The U.S. Department of State requires duplicate 2- by 2-inch photos of you taken within the prior six months. Digital images are acceptable if they "have a continuous tone image that looks very photo-like." Sounds simple enough, but here are some guidelines in case you want, as I did, to go it alone:

• Use a decent digital camera with a strong flash and at least 5 megapixels.

• Zoom in close enough to frame the head and shoulders.

• Before resizing your image or cropping it, be sure that your subject's image has, as stipulated by the federal government, from 1 to 13/8 inches of space between the base of the chin and the top of the head.

• Once you have a good 2-by-2 photo, paste it onto a new 4- by 6-inch canvas. You should be able to fit two of these images onto the page side by side.

• Use a scissor or razor blade to cut right along the edge of the images, eliminating any white borders.—Lance Ulanoff