10 Places to Print Passport Photos in the United States

This articles is a follow up to other articles that discuss about preparing passport / id photos yourself using mobile apps like passport id photo studio. Once you have arranged your photos for printing, next step would be to get it printed, if required

List of Printing Options

1. Print at Shipping Company Stores

The biggest international shipping company and chain supply stores in the US are FedEx and UPS. Both of them offer the passport photo printing services at their local office locations nearby your community. FedEx Office Print and Ship Services are the official FedEx store locations where the passport photo printing services is readily available. 2 passport photos cost around $15.00 via FedEx Kinkos as known previously whereas the UPS store passport photo services can cost around $12.00 for same two photos. There are more than 2000 FedEx franchise stores and 4700 UPS franchise stores all around the US.

2. Find National Drugstore Chain Stores

The major pharmaceutical companies and health care retail stores are the Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid and Duane Reade. These are the national drugstore chains of American retail and health care companies that offer passport photo printing services through their local franchise stores at reasonable prices. A combined total of more than 20,000 franchise stores in various locations of the US, these stores aid you in getting your passport photo printed in perfect way. Drugstores are easy to print place. You can get your photo taken processed and ready within few hours. CVS Pharmacy is an online platform with printing photo services to your nearest CVS store. It is a subsidiary of an American retail and health care company named CVS Health.

3. Order Prints at Digital Photography Studios

The digital photography studios are not visited as often in the US locations. These professional studios charge a bit more than what usually the above mentioned stores do. So to avoid extra expenses for a printing service, people usually omit these places. However to submit a decent quality passport photo for the application process is very important. So these places offer good quality photo with professional support.

4. Print at US Post Offices

Most of the US post offices offer more than just getting your passport photo printed for you. They also accept your passport application and related paperwork. The passport application acceptance service also includes passport photo service. So this is a one stop place for everything about your passport procedures. You can get your photo taken quickly and sent ahead for processing; a super easy place to do everything.

5. Order Prints from Registered Passport Expediters

For people with urgent need of express passport photo processing, a registered passport expediting service helps the applicant to get a passport photo within a two weeks or less. These places also help the applicants who are unable to visit regional agency. Most of the expediters who reside in these service agencies can help you get your passport photo processed instantly in these locations. A more convenient place to print your passport photos during urgency.

6. Get Printed from Membership Franchise Stores

There are many franchise stores which offer the certain time period of membership for various types of services and one of them is photo printing services. Some of the examples are 1 hour photo lab at Costco Photo Center and AAA travel services. There are exists more than 500 Costco stores where you can get your passport photo printed in good quality and price. These membership franchise stores provide you the one of the cheapest prices for the photo printing service. If you are a member of such franchise company then you are good for a discounted rate.

7. Visit Local Retail Stores with Printer

Getting your passport photo printed in the major retail stores nearby is much more convenient and cheaper than the passport acceptance facility. The passport photo must adhere to the strict rules and requirements of the US Dept. of State Consulate and thus no any glitches must occur. So you can visit your nearest local retail stores and ask a photo specialist for the printing services. The best place to recommend is Walmart Photo Center.

8. Print at Universities and Campus Vicinity

Every year among the huge passport applicants number, there also remains a huge number of students and people related to education institutes, colleges and who dwell in university boundaries. For these walks of people, it is very comforting to know that there are offices of student affairs and study abroad program which provide a full package of passport photo printing services. As a lot of students are trying for the passport procedures, these educational vicinities offer printing services along with taking these photos and processing further. So if you are a student, go check those offices and ask for these awesome services.

9. Visit Warehouse and Low Price Retail Stores

Walmart offers their online website portal specifically for the passport photo services. If you are with good connectivity then it is better to opt for this option. The steps are simple and easy. Upload your photo into their website, get it processed and finally the nice part is that they deliver your printed result at your doorsteps. It offers as low as $7.99 for two passport photos. But if you want it to do professionally at your own home printer then we suggest you take a glance at one of the best app to support you; “Passport ID Photo Maker Studio” packaged with pro-tools to support you with all of the troubles you may get during its hectic steps.

10. Print at Photo Booths

Lastly photo booths are not the common places to be found in United States as it is unlikely different for people in UK. In US, mostly there are shopping malls and even it is hard to find a photo booth outside of these malls. So normally people don’t visit photo booths for passport photo and it also doesn’t comply with the standards to be fair. But if you do find such photo booths, please don’t turn around and neglect them because it does prints your passport photo. Some booths even allow you to get your photo done in compliance with UK and India photo standards. If you are finding it hard to print photos due to confusing standard requirements, there is this awesome mobile app “Passport ID Photo Maker Studio” built with pro-tools that does your editing in seconds and makes most of your task much easier for you. The app can be your best option to consider for the cheaper and yet better service for your passport photo.

You can find so many places to get your passport photos printed in the United States unless you dwell in a very remote area or the suburbs of the city. All the big cities and local areas have these fundamental places. The most common places to visit for the printing the passport photos are pharmacies, local print shops, warehouse clubs, shipping stores, newspaper offices, digital photography stores and some of the other large retail stores. We will describe you the 10 prominent places and their services to get your passport photos printed in the US.

Photo requirements for EDV application form - everything you need to know

If you are still not aware about the requirements for your EDV application photo then you are at right place to acknowledge the real-experience facts and guidelines about it. Here we are to guide you through everything you need to know starting from basics.We assure that you shall have a pixel perfect photo for your EDV application after you have read and implemented these guidelines. Okay! Let’s start from some of the most important things to know about the EDV photo and its specifications firstly.

EDV Photo Guidelines

A passport-sized photograph MUST be uploaded, attached and finally submitted with your EDV online application through your application process. If the online application includes the details of more than a person (for e.g. an entrant’s spouse), then a photograph of each included person must be submitted accordingly.

1. The submitted photograph/s MUST be taken recently and MUST not be older than 6 months. The most ideal thing to do is to take a photograph recently for this purpose only. After all, this must not be a big deal for such a dream lottery. Isn’t it?
2. If your photo doesn’t fit the technical formats officially stated by US State EDV Consulate, then the Department of State’s free Photo Tool automatically rejects your submitted photo and gives you another chance to make it right. You get a lot of chances like this one. So here we stand at a safe side for a thing or two for now.
3. The EDV digital photograph to be submitted can be produced in two different ways. Both ways are equally acceptable according to the US Embassy photo requirements.

How to take photo for EDV Form

1. A new digital photograph can be taken with a professional visa photo service which is best recommended but if you want you may take the photo yourself by using a professional high definition camera. However, the photograph MUST not be altered, enhanced or using any digital effects to change the person’s real appearance in any way.
2. You can also take a picture using a camera phone with decent quality. Then you can use freely available mobile apps to crop the photograph to required size. So far the best app that you can find in the Play Store is "Passport ID Photo Maker Studio" that gives you all the pro-tools you need to make sure that the photo meets all the required guidelines.
3. The other and equally acceptable option is to scan a photographic print with a digital scanner and create a scanned photograph. The photograph thus produced can also comply with the standards mentioned within the photo requirements.

Do the photos meet EDV form requirements?

Yet you cannot know whether your submitted photograph is accepted as correct one or not; even if the online Photo Tool approves the technical formats because the status of acceptance of the submitted photograph totally resides at discretion of US Embassy or consulate. So you get only one best chance to check everything about your EDV application photograph. So, use it carefully because once you submit then you cannot undo anything until another lottery opening.

Technical Requirement of an EDV Photo

The EDV online application photograph to be submitted MUST strictly meet these official and specific requirements as per the accordance of US Embassy Consulate rules for digital photo.

1. The photo MUST be in JPEG (.jpg) – “Joint Photographic Experts Group” file format consuming no more than 240 kB (kilobytes) of file size in any way. The photo size MUST be less than or equal to 240 kB.
2. The image pixel dimensions of the photo MUST be in square aspect ratio i.e. in general terms; the HEIGHT of the photo MUST be equal to the WIDTH.
3. Stating the earlier requirement more precisely, the digital photo to be submitted MUST be exactly 600 x 600 pixels in image resolution and dimension.
4. For the digitally scanned photo produced by using the digital scanner, two additional requirements to the previous three mentioned above consist that the existing photo must be 2 x 2 inches ( 51 x 51 mm ) and scanned at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch ( 12 pixels per mm ).
5. Last but the most important and a basic requirement is that the photo MUST be in color. The black and white, gray scale and monochrome images or photos are NOT accepted. The image color depth MUST be 24 bits per pixel.

Photo requirement after EDV Results

If you are selected for the EDV program as a selectee for an interview then there are three important things to keep in mind and they are:

1. You must take two identical photos during the interview process. The photos submitted through online EDV application program must not be different in appearance from the photos that you take to the interview process.
2. The technical requirements include that these two identical photos must be printed in a quality photo paper.
3. The size of the identical photos must be 2 x 2 inches ( 51 x 51 mm ). 

You can also process these photos via the passport photo android app available in Google Play Store and remain on the safe side. This cool app called Passport ID Photo Maker automatically sets everything to the required dimensions and size and creates a ready digital format of your photograph to be printed in any digital photo studio or pharmacy nearby.

Print your EDV Photos yourself

Or if you intend to print in your home printer and you are confused with the simple steps, then you can read: 5 steps procedure to print your photos from an android phone using your home printer.Any sort of failure to comply with any of the above mentioned photo’s technical requirements directly leads to the disqualification of the EDV entrant’s application. The EDV online application photo technical requirements goes through a lot of technicalities and photo editing hassles. In the process it can surely tire someone with little or no technical and photo editing knowledge. So, the best recommended smartphone app till the date for the mobile users is the “Passport ID Photo Maker Studio" that’s available for free for all your basic photo editing tools’ requirements and other printing troubles. And surely the app eases most of your photo editing along with the photo preparation task with its pro-tools that does all of your hard work for the pixel perfect photo.

Compositional requirements of EDV Photo

The compositional requirements of the EDV photo adhere to placement and arrangement of the entrant’s visage. Some of the requirements that must conform to the compositional specifications for the EDV entrant’s photo are as follows:

1. The entrant’s full-face view with a neutral facial expression and both eyes open directly facing the camera must be photographed.
2. The vertical distance of entrant’s hairline or clean shaved head to chin must be sized or placed in the photo between 22 mm and 35 mm i.e. 50% to 69% of the total image’s height.
3. The complete view of the photo must not show any body parts below the entrant’s shoulder or any other objects or person.
4. The entrant must be in a formal dress worn daily or any religious clothing provided that his/her daily lifestyle represents the clothing. Otherwise no any uniforms or special attire is accepted for the photo. The hairline and the head must be clearly visible in the photo except any religious clothing worn daily.

EDV Photo with spectacles and ornaments 

Read our article for information on this topic in detail. In short, for the people wearing glasses, hearing devices and similar items in the head part of the body, the display of these items in the photo is acceptable. However, anything other than these normal daily items like ornaments and apparels is totally unacceptable.
To understand these requirements more clearly, see some of the best sample photographs for an EDV online application and compare your photos.Read 10 places to get your passport photos printed in the US, for information that is useful after you reach US.