It’s the time to say no to the expensive and unsatisfactory passport photographs. It is your choice to take a right decision with everything that you should know about what you can do by yourself. Yes, you can do it yourself with the Passport and Visa Photographs. And that also a multiple times until you are satisfied with your photograph because in the end the passport is going to show your identity in destinations you desire to visit later. Still many people are embarrassed about showing their passports at the airport checkpoints because they didn’t care about asking for the retake in front of the photographer at the time and ultimately ruined their better looking face. You should like to have control over your identity picture to show to world and so you should do it yourself after all your passport photo is going to last for around 10 years. Make it an awesome one no matter how many times you retake it.
Here are some 10 most vital points that every beginner or expert trying to DIY with passport photos should know and learn about:
1. Doing it yourself saves you money.
You won’t be paying any extra charges for the photographer or the professional. The expenses of hiring professionals, printing photo services,
delivery and of course the cost of multiple photographs are way too much if you compare with
doing yourself. You are building a confidence level to do it in the near future for your people so
you are making things easy for everyone around you who will be troubled with passport photos. In essence, you will be satisfied with your passport photo.
2. It doesn't take a lot of time.
If you are happy to spend for the convenience then it’s okay with the all the other options
available to printing passport photos. But if you are willing to do it yourself then you must be
glad to read that it is pretty easy to save money for it. So why increase your expenses when you can do it yourself until you are satisfied with your own home printers and personal smartphones. All it takes is a couple of your time and a thorough understanding ahead.
3. You can use the tools you have at your home.
There are some common things that you need before you proceed and they are a digital camera or a latest smartphone with high megapixels (at least 5MP), a decent color photo printer and a computer or laptop. Scissor to trim your photo into multiple pieces after you print the photographic paper to your size.4. Find a Tripod for Still Shots.
Now after you have all what you need, you need to set up the shot. Get yourself a friend or a relative because you are going to need him/ her for procedures ahead if you opt to make photo for yourself. And if you cannot afford to have anyone then it is still fine because then you need to add a tall standing camera tripod in your tools to need list that will capture your shot. If you are using tripod then you surely need a self-timer capture feature on your camera or smartphone whatever camera device you are using to take photographs.5. Setting up the right environment is a little bit tricky.
Be careful to attempt because you need to adhere to the specific requirements addressed by the federal authorities. For right background, you need to set up a white or plain off background color. For this you can use your white wall or poster board, or pin a large sheet of cloth, or a crease free bed sheet to wall, or outside in the daylight for the best results. Although wherever it is decided, the person to be photographed must stand a meter away from the background or so to avoid possible reflections and shadows. Other important things to remember, we are taking photograph in portrait orientation with no red eyes and perfect lighting. In short, a nice near natural daylight photo. Still a lot of minor specifications are important to keep in mind during the DIY procedures so you can look up in the internet at official US federal bureau’s site for extensive details.6. Set your camera to highest quality and resolution.
Camera must be ensured to have its maximum possible highest resolution and its lowest compression settings so that there’s a best possible quality photo. You need to place your camera at eye level and at least 4 feet away from the person to be photographed. Obviously the background must be behind the person and the photo position is centered to person’s visage. It can be troublesome to do for the beginners and first timers so it is better to approximate the picture size via the LCD display panel on your digital camera or smartphone. Moreover using tripod is very much helpful and easier to complete the setting up task. After you set up for the right shot, the camera display must be including the upper body and space above head in field of view. Trying to capture as much as body space is not useless after all because we could crop the unwanted space later on but capturing little body space could result in lack and hence another shot would be required consuming more of your hassle and time.7. Take a few shots and pick the best one.
Yes, it is more feasible to shoot a multiple shots. After all the setups, now you must be ready to click the snap button. If you are using self-timer feature then it is good to set a little more time and it is best recommended to flip your camera display panel to your side i.e. facing you so that you could see in it like a mirror. In today’s fancy terms; Selfie mode though it is not allowed to take selfies as your photo. Now remain calm and snap some 5 - 10 shots. Transfer it your computer/ laptop and save it to a folder so that you can work in an organized manner.8. Edit and crop the photo to the exact dimensions and compositions.
For this you need to have internet connection and go to the US Dept. of State own photo editing tool link. There you get three options to work on. Choosing your photo to upload to their system, cropping the photo to resized dimensions and finally saving the cropped photo back onto your computer/ laptop. So it is easy steps to perform for any beginner. Just head to the site, choose a photo from you folder, resize with respect to the given outlines at site’s tool and save your final passport photo for later steps of printing. But if you find it hard to manage through these steps then there’s another awesome mobile app trending in Play Store for you convenience; Passport Photo ID Maker Studio. Download and install the app in you smartphone and it does all the cropping and saving task for you with its unlimited free editing tools. This way you won’t even need a computer/ laptop. Now you are ready to print in your own home photo color printers.9. Know the app you are using.
The photo editing tool saves the photo as a 2-inch- by-2- inch photo which is the final print size required for your passport photos if you are trying for US and other nations passports. But some countries have a bit varying sizes so you need to set those print sizes to you printer settings. This can be hard for ones without technical knowledge so the aforementioned mobile app suits the best here too. The mobile app supports more than 100 countries and its official requirements.10. Finally, Print the passport photo in high quality.
After the print size is ensured, you got to ensure that the photographic paper to be printed is of high quality, matte and glossy. Otherwise all the efforts would be in vain due to the poor prints. Now, if you intend to print over your own home printers, it must be a color photo printer in good conditions so that it doesn’t excrete bad spots. While printing if printer tries to resize or attempt any changes then ignore those changes and print the photo in 100% onscreen size. After you have printed your photo, ensure the photo sizes by measuring it using the ruler. When everything is right, take a scissor and start cutting the edges carefully to produce a perfect passport sized photo for your application.Now that you have known everything about printing your passport or id photos yourself, time to take a shot.
