Germany Visa Photo – 35x45 mm in 2025

Lighting: Use natural or soft artificial light. Avoid shadows or direct sunlight.

Background: Stand against a plain white or very light wall.

Distance: Hold your phone or camera at eye level, about 1.5 m away.

Framing: Your face should occupy 70–80% of the image.

Posture: Sit or stand straight, keep a neutral expression.

With PhotoGov, even an ordinary selfie becomes an embassy-compliant biometric photo.

Using passport-size (wrong format) instead of 35x45 mm

Wearing white tops that blend into background

Smiling or frowning

Glasses, shadows, or poor focus

Cropping too tightly or uneven framing

PhotoGov instantly checks and corrects every photo before download.

So long as you’re willing to put in the effort to take a good photograph, there’s nothing stopping you from taking your visa picture at home. Simply follow these steps:

So long as your smartphone has a good quality camera, you can certainly use it to take a picture for your visa. With that being said, however, selfies are not acceptable, so follow these steps:

While you can convert the size of pictures using a variety of methods, the best option is to use our visa photo tool - PhotoGov. That way, you can rest assured you’ll have a high-quality, properly sized end product, one that isn’t distorted or blurred by stretching or compressing.

Print your image at exact 35 × 45 mm dimensions on high-quality photo paper at 600 DPI or higher. If the head height in your existing file falls outside the required 32–36 mm adult range when printed, upload it to our tool first to re-crop and format it properly.