Photos for driving licences and ID cards

Before you take a photo for a driving licence or an identity card, answer one question: who captures the image. If the answer is a licensed photographer, a booth, or a clerk at a counter, then a photo you make at home has no route into the document, however good it is. If the answer is you, then the photo matters a great deal and the specification is worth reading closely.

Countries split cleanly along that line, and they do not split the way you would guess from geography.

Where someone else captures or certifies the image

France is the strictest case in this group, and it covers both the identity card and the passport. The photograph must be taken by a licensed professional or in a booth using a system that the Ministry of the Interior has certified. A phone photo cannot be submitted even when every measurement is correct, because what is being verified is the provenance of the image rather than its quality. The photo must be under six months old, 35 by 45 mm, with the face measuring 32 to 36 mm. The French requirements explain what that leaves this site useful for.

Canada applies the same logic to passports through a different mechanism. The photo must be taken in person by a commercial photographer or photo studio, and the studio writes its name, complete address and the date on the back. That writing is an attestation by a business. Nothing produced at home can supply it, and photos printed at home are excluded outright.

Germany joined this group on 1 May 2025, and it is the change most likely to catch someone who last renewed a few years ago. Paper photographs are no longer accepted for the passport, the identity card or the electronic residence permit. Two routes remain: the image is captured at the authority itself, or a registered photographer transmits it to a certified encrypted cloud and gives you a printed data matrix code, which the clerk scans to retrieve it. Without that printout the office cannot find your photo at all. The German rules set out the fees and the exceptions for consulates abroad.

One honest note on Germany, because you may find contradictory pages. One of our research passes could not reach any official German source and concluded the rule was unconfirmed; a second pass read it verbatim on the ministry's own biometrics guidance and on its April 2025 announcement. We are treating it as confirmed. What remains true is that some official pages still describe the process as bringing a current biometric photograph, which is where the confusion comes from.

Schengen visas are moving the same way, for a different reason. The Visa Information System now records whether a facial image was taken live at the moment of application, and matching works only against images marked that way, which is a direct response to face morphing. The passport and visa comparison covers what that means for anyone applying from outside the area.

Where you supply the photo

The United Kingdom runs the most generous version of this, and the DVLA states it plainly. Renewing a photocard driving licence online lets you use your passport photo or upload a new one, and it costs GBP 14 as of September 2026. The reuse is the point: the government already holds a compliant photograph of you, so it offers it back rather than asking for another.

The postal route is different and worth knowing if the online one is closed to you, which happens when your name, title or signature has changed. By post the DVLA asks for a recent printed passport type photograph, and specifically says not to sign the back of it, at a fee of GBP 17. Renewing at the Post Office costs GBP 21.50. Exchanging an old paper licence for a photocard needs a colour passport type photograph and costs GBP 20 where a fee applies, and a first provisional licence is GBP 34 online or GBP 43 by post. All figures are as of September 2026.

The Netherlands asks you to bring a printed colour photograph to the municipality, and the same photo serves the passport, the identity card and the driving licence. It is 35 by 45 mm, no more than six months old, on a light grey, light blue or white background with no gradient. The counter checks it against a physical overlay, so the framing tolerance is tighter than most people expect.

Poland takes either form for the identity card. An online application uses an electronic colour photograph; an in-person one uses a 35 by 45 mm print. Poland is also unusually forgiving about the consequence: a photograph that does not meet the requirements normally means the official asks you to supplement the application, rather than refusing it.

Türkiye asks for the photograph to be brought, and the identity card rule is specific. One biometric photograph taken within the last six months is required from the age of 15. Photocopies, computer-duplicated images and non-biometric portraits are excluded by name, so reprinting an old photo from a scan does not work. For children under 15, a card without a photograph can be applied for through e-Devlet. The Turkish requirements cover the size, which is not the one most of the world uses.

The reuse only runs one way

The British passport-to-licence flow tempts people into the reverse, and it does not work. A passport renewal always needs a new photograph, and the two specifications differ in ways that matter, starting with how recent the photo has to be: the passport service asks for one taken in the last month, which is far shorter than anything a licence requires. Even the shops say so. Reuse runs from passport to licence and never back.

The general lesson holds beyond the United Kingdom. Two documents issued by the same government will not always take the same picture, and the file limits often differ even when the pixel minimums match.

What we could not confirm

Two gaps are large enough to name rather than paper over.

United States driving licences and REAL ID. Every state motor vehicle site we tried was unreachable, along with the federal REAL ID pages. We therefore cannot confirm the widely assumed rule that the photograph is always captured at the counter, cannot identify any state that accepts an uploaded photo, and cannot confirm whether a mail or online renewal reuses the image already held. If you are renewing in the United States, check your own state's page rather than trusting a general answer, including ours.

India's Aadhaar and PAN. The enrolment and card pages did not load for us, so neither the Aadhaar capture rule nor the PAN photograph specification is confirmed here. The dimensions circulating for the PAN photo are not figures we have checked.

If your application falls into either gap, the general method still produces a well-lit, correctly framed photograph, and you can measure it against whichever template the authority publishes once you have found it.