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Submitting passport photographs
Passport photographs
In most cases, the photography studio you visited will send your photograph directly to the police. Below you will find more information about attaching a passport photograph to your application. You can upload your photograph onto the police’s photograph server, but we do not recommend this as many of the photographs uploaded have to be rejected.
If you are not a professional photographer, please note that
- the licence officer will only evaluate the passport photo uploaded to the photo server once the related passport or other application has been processed. There is no preliminary inspection of photos.
- Photos taken by non-professionals are often rejected due to poor quality. The most common problems are incorrect lighting and optical distortion caused by too short a shooting distance.
- The police photo server is not intended for general photo storage, so you cannot download photos from it for your own use. If you want to use a photo for other purposes, please contact the photo studio.
For a passport application, you will need one passport photograph which has been taken no longer than 6 months before submitting your application. Almost all photography studios in Finland will send your photograph directly to the police electronically.
List of photography studios: For a list of photography studios which can send photographs directly to the police, please refer to the list of photography studios (only in Finnish and Swedish).
Photograph retrieval code: Once the photography studio has sent your photograph to the police, you will receive a text message or email with your photograph retrieval code. Enter this code in your online passport application. You can also use an electronic passport photograph at a police station by giving your code to the person handling passport applications.
Passport photograph quality requirements: see the passport photograph instructions.
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Frequently asked questions
Submitting passport photographs - haitarit
Yes, you can. If your passport or identity card was issued recently, and the photograph in that document is less than six months old, the same photograph can be automatically attached to the new application.
Yes, you can. However, if you want to use a paper photograph, you cannot submit your application online. The staff at a police station will need to scan your paper photograph so that it is available in an electronic format, and this takes some time and decreases image quality. Because of this, we don’t recommend using paper photographs.
If your photograph does not fulfil the requirements for a passport photograph, the licence official will ask you to complement your application with a photograph that fulfils the requirements. If this happens, you won’t need to pay the application fee again.
The quality of the photograph is assessed when the related identity card application is processed. The photographs are not inspected in advance.
Passport photograph quality requirements: see the passport photograph instructions.
No, we do not. The only exception to this is the airport police service point at the Helsinki Airport. The staff of the service point can take a photograph of you for an additional fee, but they only accept emergency applications from air passengers transiting through the airport.
No, you cannot. The police’s photography server is not intended for general photograph storage, and for this reason, you cannot download photographs from the server for personal use. All photographs stored on the server are always accessed using the photography retrieval code. If you want to have a copy of your passport photograph for personal use, talk to the photographer.
No it can’t. For security reasons, a photo studio can only upload photos they have taken themselves, as they must be able to guarantee photo authenticity and origin. The photographer would violate the terms of use of the photograph server if it were to upload photos taken by others.
No it can’t. The Decree of the Ministry of the Interior on photographs attached to passports and identity cards provides that a passport photo may not be more than 6 months old, and the useful life of the photo uploaded to the photograph server is calculated from the time of uploading. If the image is uploaded to the server at a time other than immediately after it was taken, incorrect information about the age of the image will remain in the system.
The licence officer evaluates the passport uploaded to the photograph server when the passport or other application concerned is processed. Photos are not pre-checked.