diy passport photo

The "blurb"

"The photographs must:... ...be printed professionally. Photos printed at home are not likely to be of an acceptable quality" So you do it at your own risk.

I would suggest that the passport office know that encouraging people to trim photos to the correct size is likely to compromise the composition. If your trimmed picture is still well composed I imagine it will be accepted.

Graham.

Agreed. I had mine done in a photo booth AND checked by the post-office and my renewal STILL got rejected. The picture needs to be perfectly dimensioned. Good luck.

PS. I got my money back from the post-office for their (flawed) checking service.

Jon.

The Passport Office is the most anal organ of government after HMRC, with the DVLA coming third. They make the ex-ODPM look like superstars.

If you are not in a hurry for your passport and don't mind a stream of correspondence back and forth, then give it a go. Otherwise, use their defined thing and play their silly game.

i used a digital camera pic for mine, my mothers and fathers and had no problems. Just make sure u follow the recommendations for size, background, no smiling etc. and % of face in image and u shouldnt have any problem. I did use photoshop to get the exact dimensions tho. Also did swmbo driving licence this way with no probs.

Yes the key word is "likely"; it doesn't say "prohibited" etc. I've just renewed mine successfully with a home-produced photo; like somebody else said though, I used Photoshop to get the size and proportions right. Printed it on photographic paper, then guillotined it to photobooth size leaving a white border. But I suppose most of the Great Unwashed wouldn't bother with all that (you can just imagine themn sending in a 5"x7" snap taken on the beach last summer, printed on standard A4 paper can't you?)

Certainly the least awful passport photo I've ever had (but took about

David

They have a habit of rejecting anything without the tell tale white border.

I though about doing my own but at 3 quid for the machine I decided I couldn't be arsed.

I did one for a friends baby a year or two ago - used a 2.1Mpix camera (plenty for the size in question), tweeked a bit in photoshop and then printed with a small border at the right size and then cut to size. That was accepted first try.

Howvwer even having photos done professionally is no guarentee. Loads of people have had photos of their babies rejected "because they are two shiny" (the babies that is - not the photos!) an other such BS.

The 'person of standing' must be amongst one of the more archaic, contentious and anal requirements. Although I believe they may have altered the rules of late.

To be fair, the issue of photo specs and quality has changed due to the updating of requirements; whereas many years ago there was simply a paper copy on your passport and a second one buried in the Home Office files somewhere, now they are all digitised and more importantly, are assessed for biometric parameters to facilitate computer recognition of photos. That's why you can no longer smile, open your mouth etc.

Certainly if you're just renewing, no verification is needed at all now, provided you are recognisably the same individual in your old and new photos.

David

The message from Lobster contains these words:

Oh, that's simple - I still have a couple of spare photos from the same strip of four from ten years ago. Wonder if they'll notice if I change my name to Dorian Grey?

Yes, especially when the list includes accountants, lawyers, bank managers, teachers and policemen.

I'm just about to have to do a passport renewal - I think I'll get a consular service to do it for me - much less hassle.

Mine was countersigned by a bloke down the road ("company director") ha ha. No query, and that was 6 years ago

No, that's why biometric technology is a *long* way from being appropriate for this type of use. As soon as the politicos stop listening to the tech sales people the better!

It would be interesting to know if they ever reject a witnessing due to the witness being of "insufficient standing"...

I did have one that I had countersigned for someone rejected once the (by the girl in the post office) because she said my signature went outside of the box provided - by a fraction of a mm!

(I have never quite worked out why in their logic being a company director makes you a person of standing, since most people can simply buy a company directorship for £100 along with the company).

The message from John Rumm contains these words:

Given that the scan the signatures and, at least in the case of hte driving license, scale them down, what's the problem with scaling it down a bit more? Damned silly restriction and makes you sign in something other than your usual way 'cos it's cramped.

Hear, hear. I figure we are light years away from usable automatic face recognition for reliable person recognition. It seems to me, thinking purely technologically, that fingerprints or iris scans are the only currently plausible biometric possibilities. As for tales of the feasibility of automatically recognising people from street CCTV images of faces ... !

Best regards,

Jon C.

Was it possible to deduce the manner in which the image would be captured? For example, position of seating or lighting with respect to camera? Or device (vice?) for keeping a head steady. I know the paper (by Daugman) upon which iris recognition principles are based, but the image capture requirements were no specified in detail; I suppose a ring lit camera, close up, plus chin rest, would do. Twelve years ago I did a little work on face recognition for a company involved in airport security; they had the impression (then) that iris image capture might be considered quite invasive and would be resisted.

Best regards,

Jon C.

Yes, I've done a few for people on that basis and the fuzz haven't taken me away yet.... :-)

Oh don't say that. There's a whole industry gravy train surviving on that one....