40×40 mm Square Photo — Pixels, Cropping and Print Guide

How Many Pixels and Centimetres Is 40×40 mm? (2026)

A 40×40 mm photo is a square 4×4 centimetre ID photo with equal edges. At 300 DPI it equals 472×472 pixels and at 600 DPI about 945×945 pixels; one formula gives the number: 40 ÷ 25.4 × 300 = 472.44 → 472. Because it is square, a single figure defines both width and height.

The most concrete use of this size in Turkey is the Syrian passport application. The passport service page of the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates asks for "2 colour photos, white background, dark clothing, size 4×4" when a passport is issued for the first time.

An honest caveat: individual missions publish different figures — the Syrian Embassy in Prague lists 3.5×4.5 cm on its passport page. So 40×40 mm should be read not as an immutable measurement but as the ministry's central service definition and the size our system produces for this document. Turkey's own documents never use it: ID cards and passports require 50×60 mm, the international rectangular standard is 35×45 mm, and the full list lives in the ID photo size table.

How Do You Convert a Rectangular Photo Into a 40×40 Square?

You cannot squeeze a rectangle into a square: stretching 35×45 to 40×40 moves the ratio from 78 to 100 per cent, spreads the face horizontally and any clerk spots it immediately. The correct route is re-cropping — leaving more margin at the sides and cutting from top and bottom. Trimming a printed 35×45 photo to 40×40 with scissors is impossible; the short edge is 5 mm too small.

The ICAO technical report on portrait quality recommends an aspect ratio between 74% and 80% for the final portrait; a square sits at 100% and therefore outside that band. The practical meaning: a square ID photo is not international travel-document portrait geometry but a consular and national application format. Because the authority scans the photo and places it in the document zone itself, a square crop is expected to centre the head and keep part of the shoulders visible.

The most instructive column is the crown-to-chin band. Applying ICAO's 70-80% rule to frame height gives 31.5-36 mm in a 45 mm tall frame but only 28-32 mm in a 40 mm square: the head is shorter in millimetres inside a small square, while the 40 mm width leaves noticeably more room at the sides than a rectangle. That is why square crops look airy — the margin is not a mistake but a consequence of the geometry.

Does Facial Detail Get Lost in a Small Square?

A width of 40 mm exceeds the 35 mm minimum that ICAO Doc 9303 Part 3 gives for portraits submitted to be scanned, so 40×40 is not a cramped size on the resolution axis. The same document recommends an inter-eye distance of at least 10 mm in a submitted portrait and describes paper print quality with a band of "6 to 8 line pairs per millimetre". A 300 DPI print produces 11.8 dots per millimetre, roughly 5.9 line pairs — exactly the bottom edge of that band. That is why a 600 DPI output makes sense for a critical application.

Because the head is not as tall in a square crop as in a rectangle, every millimetre of the face matters more. The source photo needs plenty of resolution: enlarging a 472-pixel file creates no detail, only softness and halos along the edges — the correct flow is downscaling from one high-resolution frame. Keeping JPEG quality above 90%, saving with the sRGB profile and avoiding over-sharpening are the three settings that make a difference in a small square.

How Many Photos and What Clothing Does the Syrian Passport Ask For?

The ministry's service description is explicit on four items: 2 copies, colour, white background, dark clothing. The dark-clothing rule is the most frequently missed part, because biometric habit in Turkey says the opposite — ID and passport photos prepared along the lines of the NVİ biometric photo notice commonly pair a white background with a light top. The consequence: a 50×60 photo taken for Turkish documents usually cannot be reused for a Syrian passport application.

There is an extra detail for headscarf wearers: announcements ask for the scarf to be dark as well, so that facial contours separate from both background and garment. The rule must be read together with the requirement that the face stays uncovered — no covering that casts shadow or hides distinguishing features is accepted. On the process side, two items matter as much as the photo: appointments are booked in the MOFA SY app, applicants aged 15 to 70 attend in person for fingerprints, and minors under 18 need their father or paternal grandfather present. If you live in Turkey a residence permit file may be running in parallel, and that one asks for 50×60 mm. Our passport photo guide is the comparison point for general rules.

How Do a 40×40 Print and Digital File Come Out of One Shot?

A single frame taken with a phone in front of a white wall is enough: the AI maps the face, rebuilds the crop to the square ratio, moves the background to uniform white and packages the 300 and 600 DPI equivalents together. In print, six 40×40 photos are laid out with cut lines on a 10×15 sheet; 13×18 yields 12 and A4 yields 35. Since the application asks for 2, a single 10×15 sheet covers both the appointment and an archive copy.

The square format has one digital advantage: because the ratio never changes, moving from the same frame to different pixel targets is easy. Alongside the 472×472 print file, if a portal asks for another square such as 600×600 or 200×200, no reshoot is needed. The best-known examples are the file rules of US visa and Green Card / DV lottery applications; for every document issued in Turkey, see our biometric photo guide.