How to take a photo for an ID card

photobooth
Table of Contents 2 min read

Its very important to make sure you take a good quality picture of your face and follow the guidelines issue by the body your applying for an identification card from. Ideally you should insure the back ground is plain white or a light coloured background with no objects in view. You should also avoid textured backgrounds and any shadows or fashion headwear, so take you baseball cap off! Your eyes should also be visible, so no glasses or shades. Checkout these images which explains a lot.

Use a photobooth to take your photo

If you don’t feel confident taking a photo on your smart phone you can use a photobooth, there not cheap though costing 5 pounds in the UK. Photo-me are probably one of the biggest companies in the UK doing this and you can find your nearest booth here. They have over 3000 booths dotted around the UK. The machines are very easy to use with on screen instructions. No need to wind the stool up and down to get the correct height like years ago. The camera now adjusts its height to make sure your head and shoulders are in the picture. Your 4 pictures are printed while you waiting and the machine will even email you a link to your photos if you enter in your email address.

Use your phone to take your photo

First things first please don’t take a selfie! You would think this would be obvious but you wouldn’t believe some of the photos we get sent. But you can put whatever photo you want on our cards as they are novelty and have no official status. We have even made a fake driving licence for Snoop dog, no not the rapper but an actual dog. Anyway, avoid selfies, get someone to take your photo for you or use your timer, the second option probably being more difficult. The photo should be a full head and top of shoulders, keeping your head straight and standing at least 1 meter away from the camera. As stated before remove any headwear unless this is worn for religious or medical reasons. Your hair should not cover your face and remove glasses. Its not a good idea to use a camera flash as it can create glare, your better off taking the photo in a natural well lit environment. For official documents such as passports the digital file needs to be in .jpeg or .png format and a minimum of 300 dpi (dots per inch). You should be able to set the resolution setting on your mobile phone. The most common resolution available on mobile phones camera is 640 x 480 pixels.

There are also apps out there to help you take your passport photo correctly. If you own an android based phone you should definitely checkout iVisa. The app allows you to crop your image and even make the background transparent. You can also set your country location and the app will follow the guidelines for your selected country. The app has some great reviews online but there are adverts and in app purchases, so be aware of this. If you have an iphone there is the passport photo UK app. The app is free to download but there is a charge of £4.99 for digital copy of your photo and £9.99 if you want a physical copy sent to you.

So there are lots of options out there for you to use. A lot of the advise above is for official documents, for our cards it doesn’t matter, you can put any stupid photo you like on them.

Happy snapping!