Passport Photos

You have to pay $9.99 plus tax if you were to go to CVS to have your passport picture taken and printed.  Even if you have your own image and just use their Kodak kiosk to print the picture the price is the same, $9.99.  I was in disbelief because a regular print is like 32 cents.  So to use that very special Kodak ID picture software to crop a 2 x 2 inch image and to use the green bars to make sure your face comes out to be at least 1 inch but no more than 1 3/8 inches long you have to pay $9.99.  And the nice guy manning the counter reminded me the picture has to be taken by a qualified professional from an establishment, meaning himself in a CVS.  I appreciated the misinformation and thanked him for looking after my interest.  I took my SD card and went home.  I had passport pictures of somebody else taken by them and they didn't seem anywhere near professional, the nice guy took the picture with a point and shoot which I am sure is adequate for that purpose but the picture looked out of focus and fuzzy.

So I decided to do it myself.

I have some understanding with dpi and GIMP, though not any where near proficient.  Here is the tutorial I found to be most useful Making Your Own Passport Photos.  The tutorial is self explanatory.  If I can do it so can you.  I have sheets of Epson photopaper, a camera, a printer so it was all good.  I test ran one on a regular sheet of paper and because I round downed too much, the image appeared less than 2 x 2.  The second trial came out just right, exactly 2 x 2 with a face only a mother can love in exactly no less than 1 inch but no more than 1 3/8 inches long.  I saved myself $9.99 and felt liberated from the tyranny of WTF CVS passport photos.

Update 11/25/11
Got my new passport in the mail. The passport picture is as ugly if not uglier than myself in real life but apparently the State Department has no problem accepting it.