First, the honest split

Every ID photo requirement falls into one of two buckets, and mixing them up causes most of the confusion on this topic:

• Standards — published by a government or international body, binding, and enforced by software or inspectors. The 35×45 mm ID-card photo is the big one.
• Conventions — what a type of issuer usually wants. Badge photos, student IDs, gym cards, profile headshots. No law specifies them; each issuer sets or doesn’t set its own ask.

The table below marks every row standard or convention so you can tell which numbers are real and which are starting points. Where your issuer publishes its own figures, those win — always.

The requirements table

Document	Typical ask	Standard or convention?	Check with
EU / ISO ID card (national ID, EU driving licence, Schengen visa)	35×45 mm, head 32–36 mm (70–80%), plain light background	Standard — ICAO/ISO 19794-5 family	Issuing authority’s photo page
US driver’s licence	Photo taken at the DMV office — uploads rarely accepted	Standard process, no upload spec	State DMV
UK driving licence	Passport-standard photo (35×45 mm rules) or a photo code from a booth/shop	Standard	GOV.UK / DVLA
Employee badge	Square or 3:4 crop, ~300–600 px, plain background	Convention — varies by employer	HR portal / onboarding email
Student ID / campus card	Square or 3:4 crop, 300–600 px, plain background	Convention — varies by school	Enrolment portal
Membership / gym card	Any clear headshot, usually square	Convention — often unstated	Issuer’s form or desk
LinkedIn / professional profile	Square, recommended ≥400×400 px, ≤8 MB, shown as a circle	Convention + platform limits	Platform help centre
Visa-portal “digital photograph”	Usually square or ID-card-shaped JPEG with pixel minimums	Standard per portal — but varies	The portal’s upload page
Japan résumé photo (rirekishō)	30×40 mm, 3:4 portrait, plain background	Convention — universally expected	The employer’s template

Reading the table correctly

Only the first three rows are law-grade. The 35×45 mm spec is a genuine international standard: the photo for a German national ID card, a French driving licence and a Schengen visa is the same shape with the same head-size band (32–36 mm crown to chin, ~70–80% of frame height). US and UK driving licences have process standards — the photo itself follows passport rules or is taken at the issuing office — which is why you can’t just submit any headshot to them.

Everything else is convention, and conventions differ. Two employers in the same building can want different badge photos: one asks for a square 400×400 px file on white; the other takes your picture at reception and never accepts uploads at all. This is why the most important skill isn’t memorizing numbers — it’s knowing where the real ask is published.

Where the actual requirement always lives

For any given document, the binding spec — if one exists — is published in exactly one of three places:

1. The submission portal or form itself. Upload widgets usually state pixel dimensions, file-type and byte limits right at the file picker. Read that line before you crop, not after a rejection.
2. The issuer’s photo-requirements page. Government issuers publish dedicated photo pages; schools and employers put the ask in onboarding or enrolment documents. Search “[issuer] photo requirements” and prefer the issuer’s own domain over any aggregator — including us.
3. Ask directly. For badge and membership photos with no published spec, a one-line email to HR or the front desk beats guessing. “What dimensions and file type does the badge system want?” is a thirty-second question.

What to do when nothing is published

Unpublished requirements still have an implicit shape — the overwhelmingly safe default is the one this tool’s presets encode: a square or 35×45 mm crop, head filling 60–75% of the frame, plain light background, neutral expression, JPEG. That is what decades of convention converged on, it prints correctly on CR80 ID-card stock (85.6×54 mm — the credit-card-sized card nearly every badge and membership card is printed on), and no reviewer has ever rejected a photo for being too conventional.

The two failure modes to avoid: submitting a casual selfie (tilted, arm’s-length distortion, cluttered background) where a formal crop was expected, and submitting an ultra-formal passport-style frame where a relaxed headshot was fine. When in doubt, look at photos already in use — your colleagues’ badges, the student cards on the lanyards around campus — and match that convention.

From table to tool

The maker on the homepage encodes these rows as presets: the EU/ISO 35×45 mm standard, the 1×1 in badge convention, the 3:4 student/résumé convention, the square upload and profile formats, and a custom ratio for whatever odd ask your issuer invented. The digital vs print guide covers the submission side — because a perfectly-sized file still fails if it’s the wrong format for the channel.

Frequently asked questions

What size is a standard ID card photo?

The internationally standardized one is 35×45 mm — the ICAO/ISO-derived format used for EU national ID cards, EU driving licences, Schengen visas and most of the world's official ID documents. The head should fill roughly 70–80% of the photo height (32–36 mm crown-to-chin) on a plain light background. Nearly everything else — badges, student IDs, membership cards — has no binding standard at all.

What size photo goes on an employee badge?

Whatever your employer's badge system expects — there is no law or ISO standard for badge photos. The common conventions are square (1:1) or 3:4 portrait crops, typically 300–600 px, on a plain light background. Many companies simply photograph you on-site; when they accept a submission, the HR portal or onboarding email states the format — that line is the only 'standard' that applies.

Can I use the same photo for my badge, LinkedIn and a visa application?

You can start from the same source shot, but export per target: a visa portal will reject a LinkedIn-style loose crop, and a badge system may reject a formal ID-card photo. Shoot once against a plain wall, then use the maker to produce each shape — that's exactly what the presets are for.

My issuer gave no dimensions at all — now what?

Default to the safe conventions: a square or 35×45 mm style crop, head filling about 60–75% of the frame, plain light background, neutral expression, recent photo, JPEG. That combination passes the overwhelming majority of unpublished asks — and if a human reviews it, a clean conventional photo never looks wrong.

Do ID photos have file-size limits like passports do?

Sometimes. Upload portals set byte limits (commonly 100 KB–10 MB windows), while printed submissions have none. LinkedIn caps profile photos at 8 MB, for instance. If a portal gives a limit, it's on the upload form; if nothing is stated, a normal JPEG under ~5 MB is fine almost everywhere.