Normalise a passport or visa photo background toward plain white — without touching the face or the crop. A face is located automatically, everything inside the protected head box is left alone, and you export a PNG or JPG from your own device. Nothing is uploaded.

Show the protected head box Find the face again

Download PNG Download JPG

This tool changes only the background. It does not resize, crop or retouch the face, and it does not replace a background that was never uniform — wispy hair edges can still need professional retouching.

Whiten a passport photo background without touching the face

A passport or visa photo is rejected for the background far more often than for the face: a white wall photographed indoors reads grey, uneven or tinted, and no camera setting fixes that after the fact. This tool does one job only — it lifts the background of an existing photo toward plain white while leaving the portrait exactly where it is.

Upload the photo and a lightweight face detector locates the head. Everything inside the protected head box — face, hair, ears and the top of the neck — is excluded from the mask, and the background is the region that sits outside it and is reachable from the image border through background-like pixels. That border-connected fill is what keeps hair and clothing safe: anything darker than the threshold blocks the fill instead of being bleached.

The threshold slider sets the luminance at and above which a pixel counts as background; the strength slider sets how hard those pixels are pushed toward pure white, ramped over the 25 levels below the threshold so the transition along the shoulder line stays smooth instead of stair-stepping. Both are live: the preview re-renders as you move them, and the read-out tells you what share of the frame is being treated and how bright the border went.

If no face is found the tool says so and hands you a manual box to place over the head rather than guessing — a tilted, low-contrast or tightly cropped photo is the usual reason. Export keeps the original pixel dimensions (capped at 4000 px on the long side) in PNG for a lossless file or JPG for a smaller upload, all encoded on your device.

Honest limits: this is a background colour and grey-cast correction, not a cut-out. It cannot invent a background where there was none, it will not fix deep shadows on the wall, and individual hair strands against a busy edge may need professional retouching. After exporting, re-check the file against the official rules.

Frequently asked questions

Does this tool change my face or the crop?
No. Only pixels in the background region are brightened. The protected head box — the face, hair, ears and the top of the neck — is excluded from the mask, and the canvas keeps its original pixel dimensions and crop.

How much of the background does it whiten?
Every pixel that sits outside the protected head box and is connected to the image border through background-like pixels. Hair or clothing darker than the threshold acts as a barrier, so it is left alone instead of being bleached.

What do the threshold and strength sliders do?
The threshold sets the luminance at and above which a pixel counts as background. The strength decides how hard those pixels are pushed toward pure white, ramped over the 25 levels below the threshold so edges stay smooth. Raise the threshold for a grey backdrop; lower it if the background is dimmer.

What if no face is detected?
The tool does not guess. It switches to manual mode and asks you to drag a box over the head so it is protected, then whitens around it. A tilted, very low-contrast or tightly cropped photo is the usual reason detection fails.

Will it make my background pure white for a passport photo?
It pulls a near-white wall much closer to white, but check the result: official rules ask for a plain, uniform, light background, not a specific hex value. A shadowed or strongly tinted background may still need a re-shoot or professional retouching, especially for wispy hair edges.

Is anything uploaded?
No. The detection, the masking and the export all run in your browser with Canvas. The photo never leaves your device and there is no server, account or watermark.

Related: Passport Photo Checker · passport photo backgrounds · background colours · rejection reasons · how to take a passport photo · Image Compressor · photo size chart · ID Photo Maker · all tools

Re-check the result Background guide ← All tools