US Visa Photo Requirements: The DS-160 Rules

US visa photos have a strict digital spec, and the DS-160 upload is where most people meet it. The photo must be a square color JPEG, at least 600x600 pixels and no more than 1200x1200 pixels, saved at 240 KB or less, on a plain white or off-white background, taken within the last six months. Your head must fill 50 to 69 percent of the image height, your expression must be neutral with both eyes open, and glasses are not allowed.

That is the whole rule in one paragraph. Everything below is how to actually hit it, including the one number that quietly fails more photos than any framing mistake.

What are the exact DS-160 photo requirements?

The DS-160 needs a square digital photo that meets every value in the table below at once. The US Department of State publishes these on travel.state.gov, and the consular system checks the file automatically, so a photo that misses even one line gets bounced before a human sees it.

Requirement	The rule
Shape	Square, equal width and height (1:1)
Dimensions	600x600 px minimum, 1200x1200 px maximum
File format	JPEG (.jpg)
File size	240 KB or less
Color	Full color, 24-bit, sRGB
Background	Plain white or off-white
Head size	Head fills 50 to 69 percent of image height
Expression	Neutral, both eyes open, mouth closed
Glasses	Not permitted (banned 1 November 2016)
Recency	Taken within the last 6 months
Head covering	None, except daily religious wear

The head-size rule is the one people eyeball wrong. On a 600-pixel-tall image, 50 to 69 percent means the distance from the bottom of your chin to the top of your head should measure roughly 300 to 414 pixels. Center your face, leave a little room above your hair, and keep your shoulders in frame.

What size is a DS-160 photo, in pixels?

A DS-160 photo is a square between 600x600 and 1200x1200 pixels. Anything smaller than 600x600 is rejected for being too low resolution, and anything past 1200x1200 is over the ceiling. The safe target most people use is exactly 600x600 px, because it is the easiest square to keep under the 240 KB file cap while staying sharp.

Here is a quotable way to remember it: the DS-160 wants a square photo of at least 600x600 pixels that weighs 240 kilobytes or less, and both halves of that sentence have to be true or the upload fails.

If you are also entering the green card lottery, note that the entry form is stricter on dimensions: it wants a photo that is exactly 600x600 px, with no size range allowed. The 240 KB cap is the same. The details are in our DV lottery photo guide, and if you are working from a printed 2x2 for a US passport instead, the passport photo size guide covers that format.

Why does a good photo get rejected for being "too big"?

Because the 240 KB file-size cap is a real, hard limit, and it has nothing to do with how the photo looks. This is the single most common reason a perfectly framed, correctly lit DS-160 photo gets refused. Modern phones save photos at several megabytes. A 12-megapixel camera can produce a single JPEG of 4,000 KB or more, which is over sixteen times the DS-160 ceiling.

So people take a beautiful photo, crop it to a clean square, upload it, and the system throws an error that says nothing about kilobytes. They assume the composition is wrong and retake it three times. The composition was fine the whole time. The file was just too heavy.

There are two honest ways to fix it. You can lower the JPEG quality or shrink the pixel dimensions toward 600x600 until the file drops under 240 KB, checking the byte count after each save. Or you can use a tool that fits the file to the cap for you.

This is where our own app is built to help. Passport & Visa Photo is a Steradian Labs iPhone app that measures your photo against the DS-160's published rules and exports a square JPEG at the exact pixel size the form wants, automatically fitting the file under the 240 KB cap so the byte size never bounces you. It measures head height, eye line, head angle, and background evenness on the device with Apple's Vision framework, shows each measured number next to the government's published range, and edits nothing: no AI, no background replacement, no retouching, and the photo never leaves your phone.

Digital upload vs printed 2x2: do I need both?

Often, yes. The DS-160 needs the digital 600x600 upload, and many applicants are also asked to bring a printed 2x2 inch photo to the visa interview. These are two deliverables of the same photo, at two different specifications, and it helps to see them side by side.

	DS-160 digital upload	Printed interview photo
Format	JPEG file	Physical print
Size	600x600 to 1200x1200 px	2x2 inches (51x51 mm)
File cap	240 KB or less	Not applicable
Where it goes	Uploaded during the online form	Handed over at the embassy or consulate
When	Before you submit the DS-160	At the in-person interview

The 2x2 printed photo follows the same substantive rules: plain white or off-white background, neutral expression, no glasses, taken within six months, head 1 inch to 1 3/8 inches from chin to crown. The State Department's guidance is that if your DS-160 photo upload fails or your embassy requires it, you bring a printed 2x2 to the interview. Check your specific embassy's instructions, because requirements vary slightly by post. A printed square at 600x600 px lands right around 300 dpi at 2x2 inches, which is why the same capture can serve both jobs.

The rules people get wrong most often

A short list of the traps, in rough order of how often they sink a DS-160 photo:

• File over 240 KB. Covered above. This is number one, and it is invisible until you upload.
• Glasses. Eyeglasses have been banned in US visa photos since 1 November 2016. Take them off, even for the fifteen seconds it takes to shoot.
• A background that is not truly plain. A wall that looks white to your eye often photographs as gray, cream, or shadowed on one side. The rule is plain white or off-white with no shadows. For more on this and the other rejection triggers, why passport photos get rejected is worth two minutes.
• Old photo. It must be from the last six months and reflect your current appearance. Reusing last year's photo is a common, quiet rejection.
• Wrong head size. Too far from the camera and your head falls below 50 percent of the frame; too close and it blows past 69 percent.
• Not square. The DS-160 wants a 1:1 ratio. A rectangular crop from portrait mode fails immediately.

Your DS-160 photo checklist

Run this before you upload, and you will clear the automated check on the first try:

1. Shoot in daylight against a plain white wall, facing a window, with no shadow behind your head.
2. Take the glasses off. Every time, no exceptions outside a documented medical one.
3. Neutral face, both eyes open, mouth closed, looking straight at the lens.
4. Crop to a perfect square with your head filling 50 to 69 percent of the height.
5. Save as JPEG at 600x600 px, which keeps you comfortably inside the resolution range.
6. Confirm the file is 240 KB or less before you upload. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that fails them.
7. Check the date. The photo has to be from the last six months.

Get those seven right and the DS-160 stops arguing with you. The photo is a small, fixable box on a long form, and the only reason it feels hard is that the rules are precise and the error messages are vague. Now they are not.