Passport photo - what editing can we get away with?

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Triggaaar

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Mike
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My mum would like me to take a passport photo for her, possibly this morning.

She could walk into a high street shop and have a snap done, but I should be able to provide her with a slightly more flattering shot taken in my studio. I also assume I could get away with minor editing, like removing spots (not moles) and softening wrinkles. Clearly it couldn't be a totally airbrushed fashion style shot, but I'm assuming we could get away with a tiny bit of subtle editing. And obviously she can't smile etc.

Has anyone got any idea what we can do?

She then wants to take it to the passport office in London on Monday, and queue to get her passport that day. How should I go about getting the prints? I'd normally send off which is out of the question, so I'm wondering if I should just set up a couple of prints with a bundle of photos on each in lightroom, then take them somewhere like Jessops.

Any suggestions?
 
Personally I wouldn't do anything to them, the passport office can reject photos, if your mother is going to the office I assume she's in a hurry to get a passport? might be safer to have good old bog standard maching prints which they are used to rather than something better which might make them courious.
 
ASDA offers instant photo printing service, if you can find one near you. you can select the passport photo option, which can create four passport photos on one standard print.
 
I do a fair few ID and passport photos. UK and EU rules differ slightly from those implemented in the USA, but if you follow UK rules you won't go far wrong.

No spot or mole removal is permitted. No 'vanity' retouching at all is permitted.
Images for children's passports have slightly more leeway on posing (it's accepted that a baby cannot be expected to hold a straight expression).

You need to have it evenly lit with no shadows under the eyes or 'artistic Rembrandt lighting', no hats, no smiles, plain background (light grey is preferable) and it should conform to the posing guidance available on the UK passport office website.

Editing should be confined to colour-balance and levels and maybe sharpening but only if in-camera sharpening is turned off.

Do not attempt to print it out yourself on a desktop inkjet printer. The water-based inks will bleed under the lamination after a few months and if spotted beforehand will be rejected by the passport authority.
Take the correctly cropped and resized image on CD, memory stick etc to a high-street printer and let them print it on 'proper' photographic paper (this is not the same as 'photographic inkjet paper')
 
Thank you all for the replies.
swanseamale47 said:
Personally I wouldn't do anything to them, the passport office can reject photos
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Where's your sense of adventure?

Brightstone said:
ASDA offers instant photo printing service, if you can find one near you. you can select the passport photo option, which can create four passport photos on one standard print.
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Sounds interesting, thanks. I just called a couple of local places and they would use their standard passport printing service, but with a jpeg supplied by you (full size).

cobra_lite said:
No spot or mole removal is permitted. No 'vanity' retouching at all is permitted.
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What's permitted and what you can get away with may not be the same :) If you're providing a professional service for clients, you don't really have a choice, you have to go by the book. But it's a photo of my mum, how would they know if I'd removed a spot?

You need to have it evenly lit with no shadows under the eyes or 'artistic Rembrandt lighting', no hats, no smiles, plain background (light grey is preferable) and it should conform to the posing guidance available on the UK passport office website.
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Yep, got all that, no problem.

Take the correctly cropped and resized image on CD, memory stick etc to a high-street printer and let them print it on 'proper' photographic paper (this is not the same as 'photographic inkjet paper')
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Thanks - I have no intention of printing it at home, the choice is whether I get a shop to make passport prints for me, or just get them to do a couple of 7 x 5s which I have split into little pics. If the former, I guess there's no need for me to resize the jpeg - which way of getting them to resize it would you go for?

Thanks
 
Triggaaar said:
Thank you all for the replies.Where's your sense of adventure?

Thanks
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At home... which is where your mother will be if they refuse her a passport because of the pics :)

I have done passport pics myself in the past but not if the people are short of time.
I once (back in B+W days) did a senior member of staffs pasport photos at the paper I worked for, sadly he'd been very rude to me the day before, his pics got the lightest weakest fix possible, and during his 2 month vacation Hmmm "business trip" faded and stained so badly he had to get a new passport there before he could come back
 
Triggaaar said:
Thanks - I have no intention of printing it at home, the choice is whether I get a shop to make passport prints for me, or just get them to do a couple of 7 x 5s which I have split into little pics. If the former, I guess there's no need for me to resize the jpeg - which way of getting them to resize it would you go for?

Thanks
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I use a downloaded action specifically for Photoshop - it has a layer with guides that enable you to use the transform tool to get the correct size and place eyes, nose and mouth correctly within the frame.
When you have it right, Ctl+J to copy the layers for as many copies as you want - repostion them accordingly, switch off the 'guide' layer merge layers and save as a JPEG.
Everything apart from the initial resizing and layer copying (for additional copies) can be saved as an automated action.
 
swanseamale47 said:
At home... which is where your mother will be if they refuse her a passport because of the pics :)
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Passports are no joke I know, they can refuse shots. But if they're printed in the usual passport pic way by someone like Jessops, having just had a couple of spots removed, how would anyone know?
 
Triggaaar said:
Passports are no joke I know, they can refuse shots. But if they're printed in the usual passport pic way by someone like Jessops, having just had a couple of spots removed, how would anyone know?
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It's a passport photo, seen by check in staff and customs officials for a few moments as you're passing through their desks. They probably see several thousand every day and they will often see flyers who are at the back end of 20+ hour long haul journeys. I'd imagine they don't give a fudge if you or your mother has crows feet.
 
m1pui said:
It's a passport photo, seen by check in staff and customs officials for a few moments as you're passing through their desks. They probably see several thousand every day and they will often see flyers who are at the back end of 20+ hour long haul journeys. I'd imagine they don't give a fudge if you or your mother has crows feet.
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Obviously they don't care what she looks like. But she does :)

We're hardly talking a lot of effort here.
 
The IPS now scan in the photos and reprint them and apply a special tamper proof plastic over the photo page with embedded watermarks.
This means the photo isn't especially detailed.
I've just sent off for a new one and I got the photos printed by photobox. They came back with a slight colour cast but I'm hoping it will pass as a cream background!
 
swanseamale47 said:
I once (back in B+W days) did a senior member of staffs pasport photos at the paper I worked for, sadly he'd been very rude to me the day before, his pics got the lightest weakest fix possible, and during his 2 month vacation Hmmm "business trip" faded and stained so badly he had to get a new passport there before he could come back
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swatches said:
The IPS now scan in the photos and reprint them and apply a special tamper proof plastic over the photo page with embedded watermarks.
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So I assume it's changed since Wayne did his. If they're just going to scan it, it shouldn't matter what paper you use either, as it won't get laminated (not that that'll affect my choice of paper).
 
Triggaaar said:
So I assume it's changed since Wayne did his. If they're just going to scan it, it shouldn't matter what paper you use either, as it won't get laminated (not that that'll affect my choice of paper).
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A very good point actually: my passports (yes, I have more than one for reasons to do with travelling to certain Arab and third-world countries that might not be thrilled to see all my Israeli or former Soviet-Bloc customs stamps and vice-versa) all have the photographs that I supplied under a laminate plastic coating which has additional information 'holography' embedded in it.

My granddaughter's child-passport is a simple scanned page pasted into the passport.
 
Triggaaar said:
So I assume it's changed since Wayne did his. If they're just going to scan it, it shouldn't matter what paper you use either, as it won't get laminated (not that that'll affect my choice of paper).
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I have one from 2006 and another from 2009 both of which are scanned and one from 2002 which has the original photo laminated. So I guess Wayne is talking about a few years back.
 
I just did my own passport photos for my Dutch passport. They are very specific on how the photo must look and even specify how wide and high the face must be on the photo.
I used my Tamron 90mm macro to get the sharpest photo, my SB600 flash on the D90 set to cast no shadows and a white bedsheet as backdrop. I PP'd it in Lightroom to get the specs of the photo right and added some contrast and saturation to the Potrait raw profile and printed it on my Kodak ESP 3200 printer on Kodak Ultra Premium photo paper, then carefully cut them out.
I went in person to the Dutch embassy yesterday to hand the application in and the photos passed their test. They put it in a type of scanner that gives a pass/no pass.
They do not use the actual photo in the passport but laser engrave it in B&W on a special plastic insert. A colour version is used in the biometric data microchip, so the criteria for acceptance is how the photo scans, not the paper used.
 
Triggaaar said:
Passports are no joke I know, they can refuse shots. But if they're printed in the usual passport pic way by someone like Jessops, having just had a couple of spots removed, how would anyone know?
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If she's taking the application in they are much more likely to reject a photo for changes IMO. If they have the person in front of them to compare the image to they can see any changes. If it's done through the post they can't.
 
Triggaaar said:
Passports are no joke I know, they can refuse shots. But if they're printed in the usual passport pic way by someone like Jessops, having just had a couple of spots removed, how would anyone know?
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to be honest, you can get away with anything whoever is deciding doesent notice

however, i doubt your going to find any photographer admitting to it, even if theyve done it

if they reject it, so what

but if its a technically fraudulent picture being used in an existing passport it wouldent surprise me if someone could get into trouble over it
 
Definitely no HDR :)
 
Im sorry i havent read through all the replies, but i simply shot 2 photos of myself and gf on our beige wallpaper background, made sure there was no shadow, and that our heads mostly filled the dimensions of the photo and sent them off.

Neither one failed and our passports were printed fine - they were even a little dark but no bother!
 
Triggaaar said:
Has anyone got any idea what we can do?
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What is the point of offering someone like you good advice when you have no respect for it or any intention of following it? Just do your own thing - and if you fail - hard luck.
 
Just get the lighting right and you won't need to do any editing. The photos are so small it doesn't matter anyway!
 
Bythesea said:
If she's taking the application in they are much more likely to reject a photo for changes IMO. If they have the person in front of them to compare the image to they can see any changes. If it's done through the post they can't.
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I think it's more lightly a problem if you actually look like your passport photo, I have never seen one yet looks like the person it's supposed to be. They always look like wanted posters for the top ten most wanted :) Well mine does anyway.
 
If she wears glasses its probably a good idea to not have her wearing these in the photo. I got passport photos done probably 3 or 4 years ago by a local photographer and he was saying (and showed me) that they sometimes rejected photos of people wearing glasses for no real reason.

The one he showed me apparently had too much reflections in the glasses lenses for them to allow it to be used, yet there was absolutely no reflections.

Just something for you to be aware of that may possibly happen (although I don't know how often it does)
 
The advice from the IPS is to remove glasses. Follow their advice to the letter and everything will be fine.
 
Sorry, am I the only one thinking this... ?

Its a tiny passport photo, not a portrait, does it really matter??? Why not just go into the post office and get it done? :runaway:
 
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Last time Mum renewed her passport, I took the snap with a Nikon Coolpix 3100 and did the prints on Dad's Canon inkjet. they were accepted with no problems and I had followed all the instructions and advice given on the passport office site with regard to size of print, size of head in shot etc. The only thing I may have done wrong was using a Magnolia wall as a backdrop but that was all the choice I had!
 
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