Chinese Passport Photo: requirements and cropper

Source: Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Australia — read 2026-07-26. This is an official government page but not the issuing authority's own specification sheet, which could not be read. Confirm before you submit.

1. Take or choose a photo shot straight on, from about arm's length or further, in even light with no shadow falling on the face or the wall behind it. Phone selfies taken close up distort the face and are a common rejection reason.
2. Stand far enough from the wall that you cast no shadow on it. The background needs to be white — the tool fills only the area outside your photo's edges, it does not replace the wall behind you.
3. Drop the photo into the tool above. Nothing is uploaded; the file is read directly by your browser.
4. Drag the blue marker to the very top of the head, including hair, and the red marker to the bottom of the chin. This is the measurement every official spec is written against.
5. Check the head-height readout. It should sit between 28 mm and 33 mm; the panel turns green when it does.
6. Download the photo, or generate a print sheet if you need physical copies.

Drawn from the official guidance rather than guesswork. Most rejections are not about dimensions at all:

• Cropped to 35 × 45 mm instead of 33 × 48 mm
• Photo more than six months old
• Background not white or not uniform
• Head height outside 28–33 mm chin to crown
• Glare or tinted lenses obscuring the eyes
• Home-printed photo not on professional photo paper

A chinese passport photo is 33 × 48 mm. That is not the 35 × 45 mm size most countries use, so a generic "passport photo" crop will be the wrong shape. The head must measure 28–33 mm from the crown of the head to the bottom of the chin. The background must be white. The photo must have been taken within the last 6 months.

China's 33 × 48 mm format is unique — neither 35 × 45 mm nor square. These figures come from an official PRC embassy page. The National Immigration Administration publishes its own photo guidelines but distributes the exact specification inside a downloadable archive that could not be read, so the embassy figures could not be cross-checked against the primary source. Confirm with your local exit-entry administration or embassy before submitting. Prints must come from a professional studio or professional photo paper; home inkjet prints are not accepted.