How to make an India e-Visa photo at home

What the form actually wants

The e-Visa photo is a digital file only. Nobody asks for a printed picture or a sheet of copies, so you can skip the print step completely and spend your effort on one good frame instead.

The numbers that matter are these. The picture is a square that corresponds to 51 x 51 mm, saved as a file of 1000 x 1000 pixels. The file size has to land between 10 and 300 KB. The head is measured from the top of the hair to the chin and should measure 25 to 35 mm in that square. The background is plain white, you face the camera, there is no colour tint, and the picture is not retouched.

• Square, 1000 x 1000 px (51 x 51 mm)
• File size from 10 KB to 300 KB
• Head 25-35 mm, hair top to chin
• Plain white background
• Facing the camera, no tint, no retouching

Set up your corner of the room

Pick a wall that is white or very close to it, with no frame, switch, shelf or curtain showing behind your head. A wall that looks white at night can turn yellow under a warm bulb, so do this in daytime if you can.

Stand about a metre away from the wall. That gap matters more than people expect: when you stand against the wall, your own shadow falls on it and gives a grey outline around your head and shoulders.

Let the light come from the front. Turn to face a window, or put a lamp with a pale shade at the side of the phone, not above you. Walk through the room and notice where one cheek goes darker; the right spot is the one where both sides of your face look equally bright.

Take the picture

Put the phone at the height of your eyes. A stack of books on a table works, and so does a helper holding it steady. Held below your face, the phone makes the nose and chin look heavy, and held above, it shrinks the forehead and tilts the eyes.

In the maker, press ‘Open the camera’. It follows your face and takes the shot by itself after a short countdown, but only once your position, shoulders, direction of gaze and the light are in order. If you would rather use a picture you already took, add a JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC file from the phone or the computer under ‘2. Add your photo’.

Sit upright with both shoulders level and look straight into the lens. Keep the chin level, mouth closed, and an ordinary face. Take several frames, because a good one often comes the third or fourth, after you have stopped thinking about it.

Clothes, glasses and hair

Because the background is white, a white top disappears into it. Wear something medium or dark so that the outline of your shoulders is easy to see, and avoid shiny jewellery that throws light up at the face.

On glasses, the maker does not build in a rule for this size, so it will not warn you either way. Follow the instructions published with the application. If you decide to take them off, look at the picture afterwards for red marks from the nose pads; if you keep them on, make sure the frames are clear of the eyes and that no window or lamp is reflected in the lenses.

Keep hair off the eyes and eyebrows, and keep the whole face open. Since the head is measured up to the top of the hair, tall or voluminous hair uses part of the 25-35 mm. A person with a big hairstyle ends up with a smaller face in the square than someone with short hair, and that is expected.

Pick the document and read the checks

Under ‘1. Choose the document’ the maker may already show the Indian e-Visa line. If it does not, set ‘Country’ to India and choose the e-Visa entry under ‘Document and size’. Press ‘Show size and rules’ once to see the same figures listed above, so you are checking against the maker’s card and not against memory.

Then open ‘Checks’ and read it line by line. Anything under ‘Some things need a new photo’ names the reason and gives a tip for the retake; those problems cannot be repaired by software, for example a blurred shot or hair across the eyebrows. Everything else, including a slightly grey background and uneven brightness, has been corrected for you.

Fine-tune without retouching

Open ‘Fine-tune’ if the head looks too small or too large in the square, or if it sits off-centre. Move the position and adjust the head size, and keep the result inside the 25-35 mm range. Brightness can be nudged as well, but only enough to look natural.

Leave ‘Face, hair and clothes’ on ‘No touch-ups’. The rule for this photo is no retouching, so smoothing skin, whitening teeth or changing a shirt would work against you, and a plain unedited face is also the quickest way to look like the person who arrives at the border.

Save the file and check it

Press ‘Save file’. The maker saves a square JPG at 1000 x 1000 pixels and lowers the quality step by step until the size is between 10 and 300 KB, keeping it as high as the limit allows. You do not need ‘Save print sheet’ for this application.

Before uploading, look at the saved file in your downloads folder. Open its properties and confirm three things: the size in pixels reads 1000 x 1000, the size on disk is within 10-300 KB, and the picture is a JPG. Zoom in to see whether the edges of your hair and shoulders are clean against the white.

Keep this file under a clear name so that you can reuse it if the form times out and you have to start over.

Why an upload fails or the photo comes back

Most problems fall into two groups: the file itself, and the picture inside it. File problems show up straight away when you try to upload, and picture problems may only appear later, when someone looks at the photo.

Rules differ between offices and change over time, and the receiving office decides whether to accept a picture, so read the current instructions on the application site before you submit. The maker follows the published figures but cannot promise acceptance.

• File over 300 KB or under 10 KB, or not a JPG
• A picture that is not square, or not 1000 x 1000 px
• A head too small or too large for 25-35 mm
• Grey, cream or patterned background, or a shadow behind the head
• A colour tint from a warm lamp or a coloured wall
• Filters, smoothing or a replaced background