Schengen Visa Photo Checker: ICAO 9303 and 35 × 45 mm
Schengen visa photos follow the ICAO 9303 standard: a 35 × 45 mm portrait with the head about 32 to 36 mm tall, the face centred, and a plain, light, evenly lit background with no patterns or shadows.
The validator above checks those rules on your photo, shows which pass, and crops it to 827 × 1063 pixels with 600 DPI written into the JPEG. It reads published geometry rules; it is not the consulate, whose reviewer has the final say, and it does not alter faces or backgrounds, so a failed lighting or background rule needs a reshoot. Some portals set their own limits, so check yours.
This is the Passport & Visa Photo Validator set up for one case. See everything it does →
Passport & Visa Photo Validator — ICAO 9303 / DS-160 compliance
Checks a portrait against US DS-160 (2×2 in) and Schengen / ICAO 9303 (35×45 mm) rules — head size, pose, background and lighting — then auto-crops it to a print-ready JPEG at the right DPI. Everything is measured in your browser; the photo never leaves your device.
What it measures
- Geometry: head height, eye line and centring against the standard’s allowed bands.
- Head pose: roll, yaw and pitch from a weak-perspective POS solver; roll is also read from the eye line.
- Background: colour uniformity (CIE76 ΔE*ab), brightness, patterns and cast shadows.
- Lighting: left/right symmetry (SSIM) and specular hotspots.
- Expression: eyes open and neutral mouth, measured from the face mesh and estimated when it is unavailable.
Face finder and limits
The face is found by Google’s MediaPipe Face Landmarker, run entirely in your browser. Its model (about 4 MB) and runtime load from this site once and are then cached; your photo is never sent anywhere, and the model only places points, it identifies no one. It also gives the eye and mouth ratios for the expression checks. Drag any point to fine-tune it. If the model can’t run on your device, you place the points by hand and the expression checks are advisory. This is a pre-submission check; the issuing authority makes the final decision.
