Photo Size
35 x 45 mm
Slovak passports (biometricky cestovny pas) are issued by the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic through the district police directorates, and the photograph attached to every application follows one biometric standard: 35 x 45 mm, a light and even background, and a head filling roughly 70 to 80 percent of the frame, in line with ICAO Doc 9303. Photos are turned away most often for a familiar shortlist of reasons—a shadowed wall behind the head, a small smile that lifts the cheeks, glasses catching the ceiling light, or an image that no longer looks like the applicant on the day of application. Get those right and the visit to the police counter is a formality.
Passport Photo Maker outputs an exact 35 x 45 mm Slovak-ready photo, replaces the background with a clean neutral tone, and centres the head inside the biometric envelope.
A Slovak biometric passport photo has to satisfy three rules at the same time: the finished print must measure exactly 35 x 45 mm, the background must read as a clean, even light tone under police-station lighting, and the head must sit inside the ICAO biometric envelope of about 32 to 36 mm from chin to crown. Cropping a phone photo by eye almost always fails on one of those three checks. The maker enforces all of them in one pass.
The numbers below reflect the Slovak biometric passport standard aligned with ICAO Doc 9303 and the guidance published for applicants at Slovak district police directorates. The same specification applies for consular submissions handled by Slovak embassies and consulates abroad, with only minor variations for online upload size.
| Rule | Slovak requirement | Typical failure |
|---|---|---|
| Facial expression | Neutral, mouth closed, no smile, both eyes open and visible. | Small smile that lifts the cheeks or narrows the eyes. |
| Head orientation | Face straight to camera, no rotation, no tilt, level shoulders. | Slight head tilt to one side or chin dipped downward. |
| Glasses | Remove for the photo. If worn for medical reasons, no glare and eyes fully visible. | Ceiling light bouncing off the top of the lens. |
| Head covering | Permitted only for religious or medical reasons, full face still visible. | Scarf shadowing the forehead or hair falling across an eye. |
| Photograph age | Recent, resembling the applicant, generally not older than six months. | Reusing a photograph from an earlier ID card application. |
| Print quality | Photographic paper, sharp, no ink streaks, no visible pixellation. | Home printout on plain A4 paper. |
| Digital upload | JPEG, colour, 413 x 531 px at 300 DPI is a safe default for consular forms. | Uploading a scan of a printed photograph instead of the original file. |
| Editing | No beauty filters, no digital retouching, no skin smoothing, no colour shifts. | Phone camera beauty mode active while taking the picture. |
The Slovak rulebook reads short but each line hides a real-world constraint that the officer at the counter will actually check. Here is what the rules mean in practice for the photograph you upload to our maker or take at home.
The finished photograph measures 35 mm wide and 45 mm tall, cropped so the head is centred horizontally and sits vertically with a small amount of space above the crown. The chin-to-crown distance falls in the 32 to 36 mm range, which means the head occupies roughly the middle 70 to 80 percent of the frame. Anything smaller looks like a full-body shot; anything larger crops the top of the head.
The background must be plain, light, and uniformly lit. In practice this means a clean white or very pale neutral grey with no visible pattern, no colour cast, and—critically—no shadow falling behind one shoulder. Even a slight shadow gradient across the backdrop is a common reason photos are asked to be retaken.
The Slovak biometric standard is a neutral expression. Both eyes are open and looking straight into the lens. The mouth is closed. No smile, no raised eyebrows, no puckered lips. This is the same rule applied across the ICAO 9303 family of biometric passports and it is enforced at the counter because a smile changes cheek geometry enough to interfere with automated face-matching at border gates.
Head coverings are allowed only when worn continuously for religious or medical reasons. When permitted, the covering must not cast a shadow across the eyes and the face must remain fully visible from the top of the forehead to the point of the chin. Everyday hats, scarves, headphones, and hairbands are removed for the photograph.
The Slovak Ministry of Interior asks applicants to remove glasses. This is a shift from the older passport-photo culture in Europe where glasses were tolerated. If you genuinely cannot remove them for medical reasons, choose thin, transparent frames, angle away from ceiling lighting to eliminate glare, and make sure the frame does not cross the pupil of either eye.
Slovakia does not have a standalone passport office network. Adult passport applications are handled at okresne riaditelstvo Policajneho zboru—the district police directorate for the region where you live—and the same counter handles new applications, renewals, and biometric enrolment. Understanding how a session runs helps you know exactly what your photograph is used for.
You book a slot or walk in during opening hours with proof of identity and the fee, and the officer captures your live biometric photograph, fingerprints, and signature at the counter. A printed 35 x 45 mm photograph accompanies the paper file as backup and cross-check. If the printed photograph is clearly out of specification, staff can flag the application and ask for a compliant replacement before the biometric session runs.
Slovakia offers standard, expedited, and next-day passport issuance for a higher fee. The processing lane you choose does not change the photo standard, only the delivery time. The same 35 x 45 mm, neutral-expression, light-background image is used whether you pay for the standard turnaround or one of the accelerated tiers.
Once issued, the passport is either collected in person at the police directorate or delivered by post, depending on the option chosen at the counter. The document itself is the standard European Union burgundy biometric passport with a chip in the cover, the Slovak coat of arms, and the biometric photograph on the data page.
Officers at Slovak police directorates handle passport applications every day, and rejections cluster around a small set of predictable issues. If you know what they are before you arrive, you can preempt every one of them.
Photo comes back as 35 x 35 mm, 30 x 40 mm, or another format from an older document. Slovak police counters accept 35 x 45 mm and nothing else.
Fix: run the image through our maker with the Slovak template; the output is generated at the exact 35 x 45 mm ratio.
Selfie taken too close crops the crown or ears. A distant photo makes the face too small and the officer cannot verify features against the live capture.
Fix: the biometric auto-crop centres the head inside the 32 to 36 mm chin-to-crown range required by the Slovak standard.
A painted wall, a curtain, or a shadow gradient. Slovak officers expect a plain, evenly lit, light background with no colour cast.
Fix: automatic background replacement drops in a clean neutral tone that reads correctly under police-station lighting.
A relaxed smile or a slightly parted mouth is the single most common Slovak rejection reason. The biometric standard is a completely neutral expression.
Fix: retake the source photo with a neutral mouth closed, both eyes open, and no visible tension in the cheeks.
Prescription lenses catch a bright spot from an overhead lamp, especially in indoor selfies. The eyes are then partially covered by glare.
Fix: remove the glasses. If you must keep them on, angle your face slightly away from the light and check for any bright reflections before uploading.
Reusing an image from an older CV, an identity card, or a family album. Slovak rules require a current likeness, generally under six months old.
Fix: take a fresh photograph on a recent day, ideally within the last few weeks, and matching your current hairstyle and facial hair.
Side lighting from a window creates hard shadows under the chin, on one cheek, or behind one shoulder. Slovak officers reject images with any visible shadow.
Fix: photograph in soft, diffuse light with the light source in front, not to the side, and keep at least a metre of space between you and the wall.
Beauty filters, skin-smoothing modes, jaw-slimming, and eye enlargement all invalidate the biometric photograph. Slovak officers can spot smoothing artefacts on close inspection.
Fix: switch off beauty mode in your phone camera before you take the picture, and never run a portrait filter over the file afterwards.
Slovak citizens under 16 have their own passport with a shorter validity period (typically five years, and even shorter for very young children), and the photograph rules are relaxed in practical ways but the biometric specification itself is identical to the adult standard.
For infants and toddlers, the challenge is achieving a neutral expression and open eyes. The most reliable approach is a home shot on a plain light wall, with the child lying on a white sheet photographed from directly above, or held by a parent whose hands are out of frame. The photograph is then cropped to 35 x 45 mm and the head centred inside the biometric range. Live capture at the police counter is possible but often impractical for babies.
For older children, the same adult rules apply: neutral expression, no smile, mouth closed, eyes open, hair away from the face, no toys or hands in shot. Officers at the district police directorate give a small amount of latitude for very young applicants, but they will still ask for a retake if the eyes are closed, the head is turned, or the background is patterned.
Slovak passports issued from 2009 onwards are biometric, and the second-generation biometric passport carries fingerprint data in addition to the facial biometric. Renewal is treated as a new application at the district police directorate, with a fresh biometric photograph captured on the day, so an older passport photograph is not simply carried across to the new document.
You still submit a compliant 35 x 45 mm photograph with the renewal file. It goes onto the paper record and serves as a cross-check against the live capture. If the printed photograph differs sharply from the live image—for example, a photograph from ten years ago with no facial hair when you now have a beard—the officer will simply capture and use the current live image and note the discrepancy.
The photograph specification has not changed between the first and second generation biometric Slovak passports. Any output produced by our maker at the correct 35 x 45 mm, neutral expression, and light background is accepted for both.
Slovak citizens living overseas apply for and renew their passports through a Slovak embassy or consulate, and here the printed 35 x 45 mm photograph becomes more important because live capture is not always available at every mission. The embassy will accept a compliant photograph produced by any studio or by our maker, provided it meets the same dimensions and biometric criteria.
Consular practice varies slightly by mission. Some embassies now offer live biometric capture at the counter on booked appointment days; others still rely fully on a printed 35 x 45 mm photograph brought in by the applicant. Either way, an ICAO-compliant image built to Slovak specification is accepted, and the maker's output is designed to sit safely inside that envelope.
If your embassy accepts an online form submission with a JPEG photo, the digital output from Passport Photo Maker at 413 x 531 pixels and 300 DPI is a safe default. Always check the specific embassy portal for any file-size ceiling before uploading.
Yes, a home photograph is fine for the Slovak passport application if you handle a small number of practical points before you press the shutter. Modern phone cameras easily produce enough resolution for a 35 x 45 mm print, and the maker takes care of the framing and background afterwards. The failure modes are almost always lighting, distance, or expression.
Any smartphone made in the last five years has more than enough resolution. Shoot in the standard photo mode, not in portrait mode, and switch off any beauty filter, HDR effect, or skin-smoothing feature before you begin. These filters change facial geometry in ways that invalidate a biometric photograph.
The best light for a passport photo is soft, diffuse, and coming from in front of you. Stand facing a large window during the day, with the window behind the camera, not behind you. If you shoot indoors under electric light, use two lamps positioned to your left and right at roughly the same height as your face, and avoid a single overhead light that casts a shadow under the chin.
Ask someone to hold the camera roughly one and a half to two metres away from you, at eye level. Stand about a metre in front of a plain, light-coloured wall so that shadows fall behind you rather than onto the wall directly. A pale wall is fine; the maker replaces the background with a clean, neutral tone afterwards.
Slovak police officers expect a photographic paper print, not a plain-paper printout. If you have a decent inkjet with photo paper you can print at home, but a photo lab or drogerie with a photo counter is a more reliable option. The maker exports a print-ready 10 x 15 cm sheet with several 35 x 45 mm prints so a lab operator can cut and hand back the finished photographs in a few minutes.
The three most common home-photo mistakes are shooting too close (which distorts the nose and forehead), shooting against a coloured wall (which the maker can fix but which sometimes leaves edge artefacts if the wall is very saturated), and shooting under a single overhead lamp (which casts a shadow under the chin and eyes). Fix those and the rest is a formality.
If you have applied for a US passport before or you are helping a Slovak-American family member with paperwork, the two systems look similar at a glance but differ on almost every detail. Here is how they line up.
| Attribute | Slovakia | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Dimensions | 35 x 45 mm (portrait) | 2 x 2 inches (square, 51 x 51 mm) |
| Head height | 32–36 mm chin to crown | 25–35 mm chin to crown |
| Background | Plain, light, evenly lit | Plain white or off-white only |
| Expression | Neutral, mouth closed, no smile | Natural expression, closed-mouth smile permitted |
| Glasses | Remove; medical exception only | Not permitted (since 2016) |
| Submission format | Printed 35 x 45 mm plus live capture at police counter | Printed 2 x 2 in for paper forms; digital JPEG for online renewal |
| Issuing authority | Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic | US Department of State |
| Live capture at counter | Yes (district police directorate) | No, applicant supplies photo |
The two most consequential differences are the frame shape and the smile rule. A Slovak passport photo is a tall 35 x 45 mm portrait; a US passport photo is a square 2 x 2 inches. You cannot simply reuse one for the other. The maker generates the correct output for whichever country you select in the template.
The end-to-end flow, from the moment you open the tool to the moment you download a 35 x 45 mm Slovak-ready file, is five steps.
The specifications on this page reflect the Slovak biometric passport photograph requirements published by the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic and the ICAO Doc 9303 international standard as they are commonly applied at Slovak district police directorates and Slovak consular missions. Requirements can change, and individual offices sometimes apply local guidance on top of the national standard.
Always verify the current rules with the official Slovak Ministry of Interior or with the specific embassy or consulate handling your application before you submit. Passport Photo Maker helps you produce a compliant photograph; final acceptance rests with the issuing authority.
The Slovak biometric passport (biometricky cestovny pas) follows ICAO Doc 9303 with a 35 x 45 mm portrait photograph. The head, measured from chin to crown, should fill roughly 70 to 80 percent of the frame, which corresponds to approximately 32 to 36 mm on the printed image.
For most adult Slovak passport applications submitted at a district police directorate, the officer captures your biometric photograph live at the counter along with your fingerprints. A pre-printed 35 x 45 mm photograph is still needed for minor applications, for consular submissions abroad, and as a backup where live capture is unavailable.
Slovak requirements call for a plain, light background with even lighting, no shadows, and no coloured patterns. In practice a clean white or very light neutral grey background is accepted, and this is the backdrop the Ministry of Interior live-capture stations replicate at police counters.
Slovak authorities expect a current likeness that matches your appearance on the day of application. The general rule is that the photograph must not be older than six months, and any significant change in appearance, such as new facial hair, weight change, or a new hairstyle, makes an older photograph unsuitable even inside that window.
The Slovak Ministry of Interior asks applicants to remove glasses for the passport photograph so both eyes and the eye area are clearly visible. Sunglasses and tinted lenses are not permitted. If glasses cannot be removed for medical reasons, the frames must be thin, the lenses clear, and there must be no reflection or glare on the lens surface.
No. A neutral expression is required, with the mouth closed and both eyes open and looking directly at the camera. This is the ICAO 9303 biometric standard the Slovak biometric passport is built on, and it is one of the most common reasons photos are asked to be retaken at the police counter.
Head coverings are permitted only when worn continuously for religious or medical reasons. The face must remain fully visible from the top of the forehead to the tip of the chin and across both cheeks, with no fabric shadowing the eyes and no accessories obscuring facial features.
The technical photo standard is very similar because both documents follow the same biometric family of rules, but the Slovak citizens' identity card and the Slovak passport are separate applications handled by the Ministry of Interior with separate live-capture sessions. A single compliant 35 x 45 mm photograph produced by our maker will meet the standard for both, though each application is processed independently.
One upload, one biometric crop, one clean background swap, and you walk into the district police directorate with a Slovak-compliant 35 x 45 mm photograph in hand. The tool handles the dimensions, the head placement, and the background so you can focus on the appointment itself.
Rules are set by the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic and can change without notice. Confirm the current specification with the official authority or the specific consular mission handling your application before you submit.