Japan Visa Photo — 45 × 45 mm
The Japan photo specification, with a tool preset to produce exactly that.
Finding the best quality that fits…
- Original
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- Result
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- Reduction
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- Dimensions
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How to use this tool
- Choose your photograph, or drag it onto the box above. It is cropped to fill 531 × 531 px from the centre — never stretched, so faces keep their proportions.
- There is nothing to set. This page is already fixed at 531 × 531 px, under 1.95 MB, JPEG.
- It crops to exactly 531 × 531 px without stretching anything, then adjusts quality until the file fits.
- Check the output dimensions read exactly 531 × 531 px, then download. If the size limit could not be met at those fixed dimensions, the panel says so rather than quietly shrinking the image.
Consulate requirements drift, and different consulates of the same country sometimes apply different interpretations. The date this page was last checked is shown above, and the official source is linked — confirm there before you submit.
Japan Visa Photo — 45 × 45 mm — the specification
| Print size | 45 × 45 mm |
|---|---|
| Digital size | JPEG |
| Background | Plain white, no border |
| Face height | 27 mm from chin to crown |
| Format | JPEG |
Japan Visa Photo — 45 × 45 mm: why uploads get rejected
Getting under the limit is the easy half. The 531 × 531 pixel box has to be right as well, and several other things are checked before a human sees the file:
- The photo is not square — Japan uses 45 × 45 mm, unlike most countries’ 35 × 45.
- The photograph is older than six months.
How it works
Hitting a size limit exactly is a search problem, not a setting. There is no quality value that means “1.95 MB” — how many bytes a given quality produces depends entirely on the picture. So this tool encodes, measures the real file, and adjusts.
Here the dimensions are fixed at 531 × 531 px by the specification, so scaling is not available as a lever. Everything has to come from the quality setting, and the tool reports honestly when the two requirements cannot both be met.
Where the first attempt already fits — as it did on the reference file below, at 94.0 KB — the search stops immediately rather than compressing further for no reason.
The crop, the resize and every encode happen on your own device through the browser’s canvas API. A photograph for an official form is not a file worth handing to someone else’s server, and this page never receives it.
A measured run of this exact preset
Not an estimate: this page’s own code, run against a 12.2 MP photograph and an A4 scan at 200 dpi, with every encode recorded. The files and the method are published here.
| Input | Result | Change | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12.2 MP photograph 3024 × 4032 px · 2.94 MB | 94.0 KB 531 × 531 px | 97% smaller | Under the 1.95 MB limit |
| A4 scan at 200 dpi 1654 × 2339 px · 996.0 KB | 89.7 KB 531 × 531 px | 91% smaller | Under the 1.95 MB limit |
Step by step
The dimensions here are fixed by the specification (531 × 531 px), so the image cannot be scaled to help. The file size has to come from quality alone.
The first attempt, at quality 0.96, produced 94.0 KB — already inside the 1.95 MB allowance, so no search was needed. One encode and it was done.
Final file: 94.0 KB, using 4.7% of the allowance, with 1.86 MB to spare.
Who needs Japan Visa Photo — 45 × 45 mm
Japanese visa applications at embassies and consulates.
Japan Visa Photo — 45 × 45 mm — frequently asked questions
What size photo does Japan require?
45 × 45 mm as a print, or JPEG digitally. This tool outputs 531 × 531 pixels under 2.0 MB.
Does this tool check my photo is acceptable?
No, and no tool can. It matches the size and dimension specification. It cannot judge head position, lighting, background shade, expression, or whether the photograph is recent — all of which a human reviewer will check.
Can I use this photo for other countries?
Sometimes. Many countries use 35 × 45 mm, but the US uses a 2 × 2 inch square and Japan uses 45 × 45 mm. Check the specification for each application rather than reusing blindly.
Are these requirements current?
The source and the date we last checked are shown at the top of this page. Immigration authorities revise photo guidance regularly — always confirm on the official site before submitting.
What happens to my photo's proportions at 531 × 531?
The image is cropped to fill 531 × 531 from the centre, never stretched. Stretching to fit would distort faces, which is exactly what gets a photo rejected. If your subject is off-centre, crop it yourself first so the centre of the frame is what you want kept.
Why does the output have a white background?
Transparency cannot survive as JPEG, so transparent areas are filled rather than turned black. White is what forms and ID photos expect. If you need transparency kept, use a PNG tool instead.
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Background reading: Image Size Requirements for Every Major Platform
Your photo is not sent to us. Identity documents are exactly the kind of file worth keeping off other people's servers, and this page never receives yours — how that works.
Disclaimer. The Japan Visa Photo specification above is taken from mofa.go.jp and was last checked on 2026-08-30. Requirements change between cycles — confirm against the official notification before you submit. Full disclaimer.