DS-160 photo requirements (and how to take one at home)
The DS-160 (Online Nonimmigrant Visa Application) wants the same photo as a US passport — with one extra constraint that catches most applicants off guard: the file must be under 240 KB. A modern phone photo is usually 3–5 MB. The State Department's portal will reject anything larger, and won't tell you why beyond "upload failed."
The exact spec
Per the State Department (travel.state.gov/photos):
- Dimensions: 2 × 2 inches square (51 × 51 mm)
- Head height: 1 to 1⅜ inches (25–35 mm)
- Eye position: 1⅛ to 1⅜ inches (28–35 mm) from the bottom edge
- Background: plain white or off-white, no shadows
- File format: JPEG
- File size: 240 KB maximum (the part that trips people up)
- Resolution: minimum 600 × 600 pixels, maximum 1200 × 1200 pixels
- No glasses — banned since 2016, no exceptions
- No headwear unless religious; face must be fully visible
- Recent — taken within the last six months
The 240 KB problem
A direct iPhone or Android upload almost always blows past 240 KB. You can't just rename or trim the file — you have to re-encode the JPEG at lower quality. Doing this by hand is fiddly: too aggressive and the photo gets blurry; too gentle and you blow the cap.
Our studio handles this automatically. When you pick "USA Visa" as the country, the encoder binary-searches JPEG quality to land just under 240 KB at the highest possible visual quality — usually q ~ 0.85 for a typical phone photo. You get a single JPEG ready to upload to the consular site.
Take the shot
Same setup as a passport photo: plain light wall, even light, rear camera at 4–6 feet. Stand 3 feet from the wall to avoid casting a shadow. Neutral expression, eyes open, no glasses, no hats. Three takes; pick the best.
Don't worry about exact framing — the studio crops to the State Department spec automatically once you select USA Visa. It also runs the compliance checks (head size, eye line, expression neutral, eyes open, no obstructions) before you pay anything, so you'll know in 5–10 seconds whether the photo will pass.
What gets rejected most often
From our automated checks plus published State guidance, the top DS-160 photo rejections are:
- Shadow on the wall behind the applicant (move further from the wall)
- Glasses worn out of habit (banned since 2016)
- Head too small in frame (under 25 mm chin-to-crown)
- File over 240 KB (silent failure on the consular site)
- Selfie distortion (front camera at arm's length warps facial proportions)
For the full rejection-reason list and how to fix each, see why your passport (or visa) photo got rejected.
Run yours through the studio
Open the studio, drop your photo in, and pick "USA Visa" from the country list. The studio will:
- Auto-crop to 2 × 2 inches with State-compliant head height and eye line
- Replace the background with pure white if your wall isn't perfect
- Compress the final JPEG under the 240 KB upload cap
- Run the compliance checks and show you a "Meets USA Visa requirements" green check before you pay
For the full US visa spec page, see USA visa photo requirements.
Cost
$7.90 for the digital JPEG (sized for the DS-160 upload). No subscription. Pay only when the preview meets spec.