60×90 mm Photo — Robed Framing and the 2:3 Ratio

How Many Pixels Is 60×90 mm, and Why the 2:3 Ratio? (2026)

60×90 mm is the largest and most atypical photo size in the catalogue. The biometric photo guide of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations requires this size for lawyer licences and for lawyer, trainee-lawyer and clerk ID cards: "the photo size must be 60 mm x 90 mm, on a white and plain background" (TBB — Proper Photo Usage). The pixel value follows straight from the formula: 60 ÷ 25.4 × 300 = 708.66 and 90 ÷ 25.4 × 300 = 1062.99; rounded to the nearest pixel that is **709×1063 pixels**. Working at 600 DPI for archive-grade print, the same calculation gives 1417×2126 pixels.

What really sets this size apart is not its numbers but its ratio: 60:90 is exactly **2:3**. That is the same ratio as 10×15 cm photo paper, so geometrically a 60×90 mm photo is a scaled-down standard print. Turkey’s established 50×60 mm is 5:6 and the international 35×45 mm is 7:9 — both far closer to a square and therefore far shorter frames. In the full document photo size table, 60×90 is the only row with a 2:3 ratio, and that is the mathematical answer to why its crop has to be built differently.

How Do You Frame a Photo Taken in a Robe?

The 2:3 ratio opens up a body margin that 35×45 or 50×60 simply do not have, and the TBB clothing rule uses exactly that margin. The guide states the clothing as a requirement: **a robe and a tie are mandatory for men, a robe is mandatory for women**. Women are not asked for a tie, but the robe is equally mandatory — this is the distinction most often missed in practice. For the tie knot and the collar-shoulder line of the robe to be visible, the frame must leave enough room below the chin; build the same crop in a 45 mm-tall frame and the robe collapses into an unidentifiable dark band. The guide’s instruction to warn the photographer **not** to cut the photo to 35 mm × 45 mm grows out of that same geometric fact.

The guide gives no head-height band in millimetres; it refers to the ICAO Doc 9303 standard and sets two measurable conditions instead: **the face must be centred in the photo** and **fully visible together with the hairstyle**. In practice that means leaving space above the top of the hair as well; if voluminous hair, a bun or a headscarf does not fit the frame, the fix is to widen the crop, not to clip the hair. The head must be straight and not turned in any direction, and the photo must be taken with the mouth closed and without smiling or similar expressions. For headscarf photos the guide’s criterion is explicit: the face must be visible from the tip of the chin to the forehead, with no shadow over it.

What Is the Difference Between 60×90, 50×60 and 35×45 mm?

The most critical row in the table is glasses. While the TBB guide bans objects such as hats, caps and pipes, it grants an explicit exception for "glasses and similar accessories that the person is obliged to use"; the conditions are that the eyes are clearly visible, there is no glare on the lenses, no tinted lenses or sunglasses are used, and the frame is not thick enough to cover the eyes. This is a deliberate departure from the "remove your glasses" practice of Turkish ID card and passport processing — someone taking their glasses off unnecessarily for a 60×90 photo and someone taking a bespectacled frame to an ID application are two sides of the same confusion.

The second critical row is clothing, and it works one way only: you cannot send a robed 60×90 photo to a driving licence or ID application, because those documents do not expect professional dress and the crop does not match either. The reverse does not work either: enlarging a frame shot without a robe to 60×90 fixes the size but not the clothing requirement. For the differences in quantity, channel and robe between the licence, the ID card and the traineeship application, see the comparison table on the lawyer licence photo page.

A Dark Robe on a White Background: Why Does Exposure Get Hard?

The technical difficulty of a robed shot comes from contrast, not from size. The guide asks for two things in the same frame: the background must be white and plain with no shadow falling on it, while the colours must be neutral and reflect the natural colours of the face, the contrast well set and the details sufficiently sharp. The gap between a dark garment covering much of the frame and the white background behind it misleads a phone camera’s automatic exposure in both directions: meter for the dark area and the background blows out and loses its uniformity; meter for the white and the robe turns into a detail-free black mass while the face darkens too.

The solution is to separate the light from the background. Move 60-80 cm away from the wall so your body casts no shadow on it; take light on the face from the front and keep it soft (facing a window, not direct sun); switch off the ceiling light, because top light produces hard shadows on the shoulders of the robe and shadows under the eyes. The guide also asks that light falls evenly on the face and that there is no "red-eye" in the photo — the latter effectively rules out a frontal flash. vesikalik.com.tr reports background uniformity and shadow distribution for the frame you upload, shifts the background to white and applies the 60×90 mm crop, but the clothing must be handled at capture time: no processing step can put a robe on you.

How Many Prints Does the Licence File Need?

The number varies by bar association: in practice between 4 and 8 printed 60×90 photos are requested, while the ID card channel runs on a single digital JPEG. You need to confirm the current figure from your own bar’s "documents required for the licence" notice (Union of Turkish Bar Associations); the guide itself sets no quantity. The practical consequence of the 2:3 ratio for print planning is this: a 10×15 cm sheet holds at most 2 true-size 60×90 photos — so 4 copies need 2 sheets and 8 copies need 4. With small sizes such as 35×45 mm the same sheet yields 8, which makes habit misleading here.

The preparation order runs like this: shoot one robed frame in front of a white wall, apply the 60×90 mm crop, keep the digital JPEG for the ID channel and order prints for the licence file. Assuming the photo must be from the last 6 months, and not reusing an older robed frame, is the safe approach. The TBB guide’s own source is the General Directorate of Security’s e-passport biometric photo information page (General Directorate of Security); the biometric criteria of 60×90 therefore share the same root as the passport standard, and only the size and the clothing differ. To see which document asks for which size, use the biometric photo sizes by document list.