100% on-device
Canada passport photo, made in your browser
The Canadian 50 × 70 mm — a size and a head proportion that no other country shares, and that generic passport-photo tools quietly get wrong. No upload, no sign-up.
The rule this document is failed for
Canada is the one country where “head fills 70–80% of the frame” is wrong.
Canada does not use an ICAO crop. The photo is 50 × 70 mm — taller than everyone else’s — while the face is still only 31–36 mm from chin to crown. Do the arithmetic and the head fills about 44–51% of the picture, not 70–80%. So the single most repeated piece of passport-photo advice on the internet, applied here, produces a photo that is badly, visibly wrong: a face far too large in a frame far too tight. This tool crops to the millimetres IRCC publishes rather than to a proportion, so the head lands where Canada wants it and there is a lot more room around it than you may expect. That extra space is correct.
The specification, in numbers
- Photo size
- 50 × 70 mm
- Head height
- 31–36 mm, measured to the top of your skull — hair is ignored
- Head as a share of the frame
- 44–51%
- Background
- Plain white.
- Printed at 300 DPI
- 591 × 827 px
- Copies on one 10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) print
- 3 (3 × 1)
- Online — the online passport renewal
- an unedited file straight from the camera — no tool can make one (1200 × 1800 to 3000 × 4500 px, 200 KB–5 MB)
- Background colour the tool paints
-
#ffffff— only if you tick the background box, which is off by default.
Applying online? That is a different photo.
Only for ONLINE renewal (a new or in-person passport still takes two 50 × 70 mm prints). The file must be saved straight from the camera, unedited: 3:2 portrait, 1200 × 1800 to 3000 × 4500 px, 200 KB–5 MB, JPEG, head 45–50% of the height. Frame it correctly when you take it — no tool, including this one, can produce an unedited camera original.
From the form's own rules, last read on 2026-07-13.
What Canada passport asks for
- Canada is the odd one out: 50 × 70 mm, not an ICAO 35 × 45 crop.
- Face 31–36 mm chin-to-crown — but in a 70 mm-tall photo, so the head fills only about 44–51% of the frame. Applying the ICAO 70–80% rule to Canada produces a badly wrong photo.
- A photographer must stamp the back with the studio name, address and date, and you need two identical prints. A home-printed sheet does not satisfy this on its own.
- No editing, filters or AI alteration — altered photos are rejected.
- RENEWING ONLINE IS A DIFFERENT PHOTO ENTIRELY: a 3:2 portrait file straight from the camera, 1200 × 1800 to 3000 × 3000+ px, with the head 45–50% of the height. It is not this 50 × 70 mm print rescaled — the shapes do not match.
Every figure above comes from Government of Canada — IRCC, last read on 2026-07-13. These rules do change; if you are reading this long after that date, spend a minute on the source page.
How it works
- Drop in a photo. It is read straight into this tab. There is no upload.
- Mark three points — the top of your head, your chin, the middle of your face. From those the crop is fully determined: the scale comes from the head height Canada passport demands, the position from where it wants the crown. You do not pan or zoom anything.
- Download the single 50 × 70 mm photo, or the print sheet with all 3 copies on it.
Questions
Can I really use a home-printed photo for a Canadian passport?
Read this before you print. Canada requires the photographer to stamp or write the studio’s name, address and the date on the BACK of the photo, and you must supply two identical prints. A sheet you printed yourself does not satisfy that on its own, whatever its geometry. Where this tool earns its keep for Canada is getting the crop right before you go — and for the many Canadian forms that are not the passport and do not demand the stamp.
Can I edit the background or use an AI touch-up?
No — and Canada is unusually explicit about it, naming altered and AI-edited photos as grounds for rejection. That is precisely why the background replacement in this tool is a tick-box that is off by default, with the warning next to the switch. For a Canadian passport, find a real white wall.
Why does my head look so small in the preview?
Because it should. 50 × 70 mm is a tall frame and the face is only 31–36 mm of it. If your Canadian photo looks like a European one, something has gone wrong.
Can I use this photo to renew my passport online?
No, and no tool can make that file — including this one. Canada’s online renewal asks for the photo “saved directly from the original file captured by the camera”: an unedited camera original, which by definition is not something software produced. It is a different picture in every respect, too — a 3:2 portrait frame between 1200 × 1800 and 3000 × 4500 px, 200 KB to 5 MB, with your head 45–50% of the height. The printed passport photo is 50 × 70 mm, which is not a 3:2 shape, so it is not the same picture rescaled. Renewing online means framing it properly in the camera and uploading what the camera saved. This page is for the printed photo — which is still what a new or in-person passport takes.
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
It is not uploaded — and that is a fact of how the tool is built, not a promise in a privacy policy. There is no upload endpoint. The photo is read straight into this browser tab and cropped by code running on your own machine; you can pull out your Wi-Fi halfway through and it will still finish. Given that a passport photo is your face attached to a government form, that is the only honest way to build this.
Other documents
The same tool knows all of them — pick one from the dropdown above, or start from its own page: