NZ passport photo checker: “Your photo does not meet our photo requirements”

What the message means

The passport office’s technical help page explains that this message appears when the checker “cannot identify the problem with your photo”. It’s the checker’s general rejection, so the cause can be technical (the file) or about the photo itself.

Check the technical requirements first

The same page lists them:

• Shape: a “4:3 aspect ratio, or 3:4 on a smartphone”, meaning a portrait photo 3 wide by 4 high.
• File type: “.jpg or .jpeg”.
• File size: “between 250KB and 5MB”.
• Pixels: “between 900 and 4500 pixels wide, and 1200 and 6000 pixels high”.

Common causes are a photo cropped to a square or a 9:16 shape, a HEIC or PNG file, a file shrunk below 250 KB by an app, or a screenshot. For aspect-ratio problems, the official technical help also suggests checking your device’s region setting, as some phones save photos in a different shape depending on it.

Then check the photo itself

• A plain, light background with strong contrast to your face, and no shadows behind you.
• Even light on your face, no glare.
• Your head straight, eyes open, mouth closed, a clear gap around the sides and top of your head, with your shoulders and upper chest in the photo.
• Taken by someone else: the NZ page says “Selfies will be rejected.”
• Not edited: “Do not edit, apply filters, or use AI tools to modify how you look.”

Before you try again

IDPlain’s free checker reads the size and type of your file and measures your head, background and light on your device. Files it makes for the NZ online passport are 900×1200-pixel JPEGs between 250 KB and 5 MB, cropped from your original and never edited.