German passport and ID card photo — the 35 × 45 mm rules, and why it must now be taken digitally

A German passport (Reisepass) or identity card (Personalausweis) photo is 45 mm high and 35 mm wide, with the face, from the tip of the chin to the top of the head, filling 70 to 80% of the height, which is 31.5 to 36 mm. The bigger change is how the photo is made. Since 1 May 2025, § 6 of the Passport Act allows only two routes: a registered photo service provider takes the picture electronically and sends it to the authority through a secure, certified procedure, or the passport authority takes it on its own equipment. Paper photos were tolerated in exceptional cases until 31 July 2025. A print made at home, or a crop made on this page, is therefore no longer accepted for an application in Germany. This page explains the rules and lets you practise the framing, so the photo taken for you passes first time.

What changed on 1 May 2025

The Act to strengthen security in passport, ID and immigration documents, passed on 3 December 2020, came into force on that date. According to the federal ID card portal, the aim is to raise photo quality and security and to reduce the risk of manipulated passport pictures. In practice:

• At a photo studio or chemist’s shop that is registered for the service, the photo goes to a cloud certified to the Federal Office for Information Security’s requirements. You receive a printout with a Data-Matrix code, which the authority scans at your appointment to fetch the picture.
• At the authority, a photo station such as the Bundesdruckerei’s PointID takes it on the spot. With PointID the fee is 6 euros per photo.
• The rule covers passports, identity cards, electronic residence permits and the travel documents for foreigners, refugees and stateless persons.

City pages show how this works locally. Stuttgart, for example, lists the citizens’ offices that have a terminal, notes that its terminals are not yet suitable for toddlers up to about four years old, and points families to a certified studio instead. A driving licence application there still takes a printed photo.

The photo requirements in Anlage 8

The technical rules sit in Anlage 8 of the Passport Regulation, last amended in 2025. Each line below comes from that annex; the millimetre figures are the percentages applied to a 45 mm photo.

Neither the annex nor the portal names a background colour, only a single colour with clear contrast. The preset here uses light grey because it contrasts with most hair and skin tones.

Using this page to rehearse the framing

Because the real photo comes from a provider or the authority, this tool is a preview, not a submission.

1. Choose a front-facing photo taken against a plain wall. Photo type opens on Germany passport & ID card — 35 × 45 mm, and the official notes and warning appear underneath it.
2. Tick Show face-position guides. The yellow line sits about 4.1 mm below the top edge for the top of your head, and the blue band, from 35.6 to 40.1 mm down, is where your chin belongs. The green dotted line is only an estimate of the eye line, and the dashed oval is a rough head outline.
3. Move and scale the picture by dragging it, with Zoom or the − and + buttons, or with Horizontal position and Vertical position. Reset returns to the starting crop.
4. Judge what the photographer will judge. Is the background plain and evenly lit? Do hair or glasses hide the eyes? Is the head tilted? Light clothing against a light wall, or a fringe that reaches the eyes, is easier to fix before the appointment than at it.

If you press Make passport photos anyway, you get a 413 × 531 pixel image (35 × 45 mm at 300 DPI) and a 4 × 6 inch sheet with eight copies in two rows of four, 2 mm apart. In Germany treat them as a rehearsal or for an unrelated form that wants this size, never for the passport or ID card.

Reasons a photo is refused

Anlage 8 illustrates every requirement with examples of what fails. Grouped together, they are:

• Lighting: hard shadows, a picture that is too dark, reflections on the skin, red eyes.
• Position: head tilted to one side, tipped up or down, or off centre.
• Sharpness and contrast: blur, or contrast too low because the image is too dark or too light.
• Background: patterns, shadows, or too little contrast with the face and hair.
• Image quality: retouching or filters, soft focus, too low a resolution.
• Expression: laughing, open mouth, closed or squinting eyes, grimaces.
• Eyes: frames across the eyes, hair over the eyes, lenses too dark, reflections.
• Covering: caps, or a covering that hides too much of the face.
• Children: a second person or an object in the picture, or no frontal view.

Under § 6(3) of the Passport Act, the authority can also require the photo to be taken in front of a member of staff if it doubts the person’s identity or suspects the picture was edited.

Applying from abroad

German missions take passport and ID card applications from Germans living abroad. The regulations keep one door open for paper: if a mission cannot take the photo electronically, it may accept a current printed photo of 45 × 35 mm, portrait format, without a border, and it records the source of the picture as not verifiable. Whether your mission still needs a print, or now takes the photo at the counter, is something only its own page or staff can tell you, so ask before you print. If a print is wanted, the 35 × 45 mm output here matches that size, but it still has to meet Anlage 8 in full.

What the tool cannot check

The guides are fixed lines, not face detection. The tool does not measure exposure, sharpness, shadows, reflections, tilt or expression, and it cannot know when the picture was taken. Above all, it cannot send a photo through the certified cloud, which is the only way a provider’s photo reaches a German authority.

Related photo pages

Photo sizes by country and document compares the formats side by side. For a German or other Schengen visa, which still uses printed photos, see the Schengen visa photo page. The France passport photo page covers a neighbour that also requires approved photographers, and the UK passport photo page covers a country where self-taken photos are still possible.