India e-Visa photo requirements
The Indian Visa Online portal (indianvisaonline.gov.in) wants a 2 × 2 inch square photo on a plain white background — same dimensions as a US passport photo, but with a much tighter file-size cap and a stricter background tolerance. Most rejections come from either uploading a non-square photo or blowing past the 300 KB limit.
The exact spec
Per the Indian Bureau of Immigration's e-Visa requirements:
- Dimensions: 2 × 2 inches square (51 × 51 mm) — must be square, not rectangular
- Head height: 25 to 35 mm chin to top of hair
- Eye position: 16 to 23 mm from the top edge
- Background: plain white, no patterns, no shadows
- File size: 10 KB minimum, 300 KB maximum
- Format: JPEG only (PDF and PNG are rejected)
- Resolution: minimum 350 × 350 pixels
- Recent: taken within the last three months (stricter than the typical six-month rule)
- Expression: face fully visible, mouth closed, eyes open
- No glasses — India tightened this rule in 2018, no exceptions
- No headwear unless religious; face must be fully visible from forehead to chin
Square format — the most common upload error
A typical phone photo is 4:3 or 3:4, not 1:1. If you crop in your phone's Photos app, you'll usually end up close-but-not-quite-square — and the Indian Visa Online portal silently rejects anything that isn't a clean square. Our studio crops to exactly 51 × 51 mm at the right head height, so the file you download is portal-ready.
The 300 KB upload cap
A direct iPhone or Android photo is 3–5 MB. The Indian portal caps at 300 KB. You can't just rename the file — you have to re-encode the JPEG at lower quality. Doing this manually is fiddly: too aggressive and facial detail goes blurry; too gentle and you blow the cap.
The studio handles this automatically. Pick "India Visa" from the country list and the encoder binary-searches JPEG quality to land just under 300 KB while keeping the photo sharp.
Setup at home
Same setup as a US passport photo: plain white wall, even diffuse light, stand 3 feet from the wall to avoid shadows, rear camera at 4–6 feet. Neutral expression, eyes open, no glasses, no hats.
If your wall isn't perfectly white, don't worry — the studio replaces the background with pure white automatically. India's spec is strict about background uniformity but doesn't care where the source wall came from once we've replaced it.
What gets rejected at the portal
- Photo not square (cropped at 4:3 or 3:4 aspect ratio)
- File over 300 KB or under 10 KB
- Glasses worn (banned since 2018)
- Background not uniform white (off-white, cream, light grey all fail)
- Photo older than three months — India is stricter than most
- Hard shadow on the wall behind the applicant
For the full rejection list (with fixes for each), see why your passport or visa photo got rejected.
Run yours through the studio
Open the studio, drop your photo in, and pick "India Visa" from the country list. The studio will:
- Auto-crop to a clean 51 × 51 mm square at the right head height
- Replace the background with plain white
- Compress the JPEG to under the 300 KB upload cap
- Run compliance checks (head size, eye line, neutral expression, no obstructions)
For the full India visa spec page, see India visa photo requirements. For an Indian passport photo (different spec — 35 × 45 mm rectangle), see India passport photo requirements.
Cost
$7.90 for the digital JPEG (sized for the Indian Visa Online portal). No subscription. Pay only when the preview shows "Meets India Visa requirements" with a green check.