DV lottery photo requirements, explained

Why the photo matters so much

The Diversity Visa programme asks for a digital photo of every person named in an entry: you, your spouse and each unmarried child under 21, even those who won't immigrate with you. A photo that breaks the rules can disqualify the whole entry, and you usually only find out much later.

The rules aren't hard, but they are exact. Most rejected photos aren't bad pictures; they're ordinary phone photos that were never cropped, resized or framed for the form. This guide goes through each rule in plain words, then shows what you can check yourself and what a tool can check for you.

The file rules

These are the rules a computer can check exactly, so they are the easiest to get right:

A note on the 240 kB limit: the instructions don't say whether a kilobyte is 1,000 or 1,024 bytes. Keeping the file at 240,000 bytes or less passes either way, and that's what the checker does.

The 20:1 compression figure comes from the Department's general digital-image guidance. A 600 × 600 photo holds about 1,080,000 bytes of raw colour, so in practice a natural photo of 54 kB or more stays within it. Real, detailed photos easily do; a file squeezed down to a few kilobytes may not.

Head size and eye position

The Department's photo template sets two measurements, both as a share of the photo's height:

• Head height: 50–69%. Measured from the top of the hair (not the top of the forehead) to the bottom of the chin. In a 600-pixel photo that's 300 to 414 pixels.
• Eye level: 56–69% from the bottom. In a 600-pixel photo the eyes sit between 336 and 414 pixels up from the bottom edge, which puts them a little above the middle.

Head too small usually means the photo was taken from too far away or not cropped; head too large usually means a close-up selfie. Both are fixed by cropping and zooming, as long as the original photo has enough space around the head and shoulders.

The head should also be centred and facing straight ahead, not tilted or turned. Cropping can centre it; it can't straighten a turned head, which needs a new photo.

Background, face and clothing

• Recent: taken within the last six months, so it shows how you look now.
• Background: plain white or off-white, with no pattern, objects or strong shadows.
• Face: facing the camera directly, neutral expression, both eyes open, the photo in focus.
• Glasses: not allowed, including clear ones.
• Head coverings: only those worn daily for religious reasons, with the full face visible and no shadow on it.
• Headphones and devices: not allowed.
• Clothing: normal daily clothes; no uniforms, except religious clothing worn every day.

These are the rules that depend on how the photo was taken. If one of them is wrong, the only safe fix is to take the photo again, and the guide to taking a DV photo with your phone explains how.

What you must not do to the photo

The instructions warn that a photo manipulated in any way may make the entrant ineligible. The Department's own photo tool only rotates, resizes and crops, and that's a good guide to what's safe:

Two more things to avoid: don't reuse the photo from a previous year's entry, and don't scan or copy the photo from a passport, driver's licence or other official document. Both are against the instructions.

How to check and fix your photo

1. Open the DV Lottery Photo Checker on your phone or computer and take or choose the photo.
2. Read the check. Each rule is marked Meets requirement, Fix required or Possible issue, so you know what the tool will fix and what you should look at.
3. Move and zoom the photo, then place the three lines on the top of the hair, the eyes and the chin. The head and eye checks update as you go.
4. Press Fix my photo. You get a 600 × 600 JPEG under 240 kB, checked again after saving.
5. Go through the Check these yourself list - recency, glasses, expression, edits - and download the photo.

Everything happens in your browser, so the photo of your face is never uploaded anywhere. If you already have a correctly framed photo and only need the file changed, Resize Image, Compress Image and Convert Image do each step separately.

What no tool can promise

Software can measure a file exactly, and it can estimate things like brightness or how plain a background looks. It can't know when a photo was taken, whether it was used before, or whether it was edited earlier, and it can't decide acceptance. Only the U.S. Department of State does that.

Be wary of any website that calls its result "approved" or "guaranteed", charges to "pre-check" an entry, or looks like a government site without a .gov address. The official instructions are on travel.state.gov, and entries are made only at dvprogram.state.gov.