passport

Introduction

Doing passport photos can be complicated due to the many rules.

Here are somethings to keep in mind:

  • We primarily do United States Passports

  • If a client wants a passport for any other country, they must provide the guidelines

Follow these steps to make the process easier.

US Passport Guidelines

  1. Use a clear image of your face 

  2. Do not change your photo using computer software, phone apps or filters, or artificial intelligence

  3. Take off your eyeglasses for your photo

  4. Use a white or off-white background without shadows, texture, or lines 

Shadows and Lighting

Size and Position

Pose and Expression

Atire, hats and glasses

Background

Children

Procedure

Booking

  1. In Stratus find the client a date and time for their session

  2. Get clients first, last name, phone number and email address.

3. Click Next and Next one more time

4. For session group move over Session Group “Regular”

5. Click Next

6. In session description write “Passport”

7. Set session type to “Passport”

8. Click next

9. Unselect print session confirmation and click finish

10. The session should pop up as this:

Session Day

  1. Confirm contact info and name in session window

  2. Let the client use the dressing rooms

  3. Set up the lights and camera

4. Take 4 photos with slight variations in head and chin height

5. We do not normally show the client the options but if they ask show them

6.

Editing and printing

  1. Insert the memory card into the computer and find your files.

  2. Highlight your files, right click, and select CUT.

  3. Navigate to the images drive > current year > current month.

    • If the current month folder is missing, create a new one by clicking Home, then New Folder, and naming it with today's date.

  4. Go into the current date folder you just created and create another new folder. Name this folder with the clients Last Name, First Name - your initials (see video for reference)

  5. Go into that folder you just created, right click, click paste

  6. Choose the BEST photo (subject should be looking straight on to the camera, neutral/no smile, no glasses or hats on) to use for the passport

  7. Open up photoshop if it isn’t already open

  8. Drag the photo you want printed into photoshop (see video for reference)

  9. *In photoshop* Click on file > open > images drive (see video for reference) > _Sean > US Passport Template

  10. Click on the passport photo and crop to 8x10 (see video for reference)

  11. Using the move tool, click and drag the passport photo onto the US Passport Template (see video for reference)

  12. Using the zoom tool (magnifying glass), zoom out by clicking on the “ - ” sign (see video for reference)

  13. Click on edit > free transform and scale it down by dragging the bars inwards (see video for reference)

  14. Center the photo again using the move tool by clicking and dragging (see video for reference)

  15. Click on the zoom tool (magnifying glass) again and click on the “ + “ sign to zoom into the canvas (see video for reference)

  16. Click on edit > free transform and resize the subjects head so that the top of the head and bottom of the chin are touching the guides (blue lines) (see video for reference)

  17. Center the photo again by either using the move tool or the arrow keys on the keyboard

  18. Go to the layers panel and highlight all the layers by holding “ctrl” on the keyboard and clicking on layers

  19. Once highlighted, right click on one of the layers and click on merge visible

  20. Create a 4x5 canvas by going to file > new

  21. On the right side of the screen, change pixels to inches, width to 4, height to 5, and resolution to 300 (see video for reference), then click create

  22. Using the move tool again, drag the photo from US Passport Template tab onto the Untitled tab onto the 4x5 canvas (see video for reference)

  23. In the layers panel, double click on layer 1 and click on stroke. Color = black, Position = outside, Size = 1 px (see video for reference)

  24. Using the move tool, drag the photo to the top left corner until it snaps into place (see video for reference)

  25. Holding “Alt” on the keyboard, click on the photo and drag it to the right corner until it snaps into place. Repeat this step until you have 4 photos on the canvas (see video for reference)

  26. In the layers panel, highlight all the layers by holding “Shift” on the keyboard and click on the “Background” layer (see video for reference)

  27. Right click on any of the highlighted layers and click merge layers (see video for reference)

  28. Go to file > save as **if a window pops up that says “Save to Creative Cloud”, click “on your computer” located at the bottom left (see video for reference)

  29. Navigate to the clients folder in the images drive (the folder you created in the current date folder)

  30. Look for “Save as type:” > click on the drop down menu > JPEG (see video for reference)

  31. Rename file to “Passport”. Field box can be found next to “File name:”

  32. Click “Save”

  33. Set the quality to 12 and “Format Options” should be set to Baseline (“Standard”). Then click “OK”

  34. Badabing Badaboom! There you go! You created your passport!!