ID Photo Maker — Badges, Student IDs & Cards
ID photo maker for badges, student IDs and cards — guided crop with head-position guides, background check, exact downloads and a 4×6 print sheet.
- Plain wall — a step in front of it; no posters or texture behind you.
- Eye level — phone at eye height, not tilted up from the chin.
- Arm's-length plus — 1–1.5 m away; rear camera if someone can help.
- Even light — face a window; no side shadows, no backlight.
Every ID photo that isn’t a passport
Passport photo tools are everywhere — but most of the ID photos you actually need aren’t passports. A badge photo for the new job, a student ID for enrolment week, a membership card at the gym, a square headshot the volunteer portal demands, a visa application that asks for a “recent digital photograph” without saying of what. This site is built for that other ninety percent: pick the shape, get a guided crop, check the technical basics, download.
How the guided crop works
The crop frame locks to your preset’s proportions — square for a badge, 35×45 for an ID card, your own ratio for anything else. Inside it, two dashed lines mark the crown and chin positions the format conventionally wants, so the head-size rule is handled by construction rather than guesswork. Drag to position, corner-drag to resize, and the live checks report output size, effective print resolution, measured head height (two clicks) and background neutrality from edge sampling.
Honest about what “the rules” are
One thing this site will not do is invent regulations. The 35×45 mm ID-card photo is a real international standard; the “employee badge photo” is not — it’s a convention that varies employer to employer, and many issuers never publish dimensions at all. Where a number is convention rather than law, the tool and the requirements guide say so — and when your issuer does publish a figure, theirs wins.
Private by design
There is no upload step anywhere in this tool. Your photo is read by your own browser, drawn on a canvas, measured and handed back as a download — the page could be unplugged from the internet after loading and every feature would still work. For a photo destined for your employer’s or school’s database, that felt like the only acceptable design. The privacy policy spells it out.
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Open →How to Take an ID Photo at Home
Phone at eye level, a step from a plain wall, window light — the method that works.
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Open →Frequently asked questions
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?
No — there is no upload step at all. This tool is JavaScript running in your browser tab: your file is decoded, cropped, sampled and re-encoded on your own device. Load the page, turn off Wi-Fi, and every feature still works. See the privacy policy.
Which presets are included?
Six: a generic square (1:1, 600×600 px — what most upload portals mean by 'square photo'), an employee badge (1×1 in, 300×300 px), the EU/ISO ID-card format (35×45 mm), a 3:4 portrait (30×40 mm — student IDs and Japan's résumé convention), a professional profile headshot (square 600×600 px, sized above LinkedIn's 400×400 recommendation), and a custom ratio you set yourself — any W:H from 1:1 to 9:9, printed at 20–51 mm wide.
Are these the 'official' sizes?
Only where an official size exists — and this site says so plainly. The 35×45 mm ID-card format is the real standard (ISO/IEC 19794-5 family, the same photo used for EU national IDs and driving licences). Badge, student-ID, membership-card and social-profile formats are conventions: each employer, school or platform sets its own ask, and many never publish numbers. We encode the common conventions and label them as such — always confirm against what your issuer actually wrote down. The requirements guide marks every row 'standard' or 'convention'.
How do the head-position guides work?
The crop frame is locked to the preset's shape, and two dashed lines mark where the crown of your head and your chin should sit. The band between them reflects the usual convention for that format — roughly 70–80% of photo height for an ID-card shot, 55–75% for a badge, a looser 45–65% for a professional headshot where shoulders should show. Position the crop so your head fills the band; for an exact number, click Mark crown & chin and tap the two points.
What does the background check actually measure?
It samples the border pixels of your crop — the top and side edges where only background should be — and measures brightness, evenness and how colourful the pixels are. A plain light wall passes; a dark, strongly coloured or busy backdrop is flagged. It only sees the edges: shadows cast behind your head are beyond what any pixel check can judge, which is why the lighting guide exists.
What do I get at the end?
Two downloads: the single photo file at the exact pixel dimensions of the preset (JPEG or PNG), and a 4×6-inch print sheet at true 300 dpi with your photo tiled as many times as fits — 24 badge-size prints, eight 35×45 mm prints — plus dashed cutting guides. Hand the sheet to any photo lab or kiosk as a normal 4×6 print.
Will a pass on every check guarantee acceptance?
No — and no honest tool can promise that. We measure what software can measure: crop shape, output pixels, head height and background tone. Expression, shadows on the face, photo age, your employer's dress code and the human reviewing your submission are all outside the measurement. A pass means 'no common technical problem found' — your issuer always decides.
Digital upload or printed photo — which do I need?
Increasingly digital: employee-badge systems, student-ID portals and visa-application social formats almost always want a file, usually JPEG, square or ID-card shaped, with pixel minimums the portal states. Printed photos are still asked for by some schools, gyms and government counters — that's what the 4×6 sheet is for. The digital vs print guide helps you tell which you need and avoid the trap of photographing a print.
Latest articles
Digital vs Print — How to Submit an ID Photo
Pixels vs paper — file limits, JPEG or PNG, 300 dpi printing, and the re-photograph trap.
Lighting and Background for ID Photos
Window light done right, killing wall shadows, and which backdrop colours are actually safe.
How to Take an ID Photo at Home
Phone at eye level, a step from a plain wall, window light — the method that works.
ID Photo Requirements by Document Type
Which ID photo sizes are actual standards and which are just convention — the honest table.