Two photos, two specs: which one you actually need
A Chinese visa application has two photo moments, and they do not take the same photograph. The online form — COVA — has you select a file, crop it inside a pop-up window, and submit that crop for an automated check. The print is the one handed over at the visa centre with the paper application.
The two specifications are stated in different units — millimetres on paper, pixels on screen — and they disagree on the one thing that cannot be repaired afterwards: the shape of the frame. The digital frame is 354×472 to 420×560 pixels. The print is 33 mm across by 48 mm tall — proportionally narrower. A crop that fills one leaves the other short at the chin or padded at the sides.
| The COVA upload | A JPEG file at 354×472 to 420×560 pixels, inside 40–120 KB, cropped in the portal’s own pop-up tool. |
|---|---|
| The visa-centre print | A 33×48 mm photograph on glossy photo paper, handed over at the appointment. |
| What they share | Head size, background, expression, head position, and the six-month recency rule. |
| What they do not share | The proportions of the frame. One crop cannot satisfy both. |
Build the digital file first — it is the one with an automated gate in front of it — and take the print from the same sitting.
The digital spec COVA measures, and where each number comes from
The figures below come from one document: the poster titled "Photo Requirements for Chinese Visa Application", published by the Department of Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and shown behind the photo-requirements panel of the online application at visaforchina.cn. Not every row is a straight transcription of it, and the notes below say which are not.
| Photo size | 354×472 to 420×560 pixels |
|---|---|
| File size | 40–120 KB |
| Format | JPEG |
| Head height | 58.4–68.7% of the photo's height |
| Eye height | at least 54% up from the bottom of the photo |
| Head tilt | 20° or less |
| Background | Plain white |
The head-height band is not published as a proportion at all — the poster states it as a physical measurement on the paper photograph: "the head height, measured from the base of the chin to the crown of the head, should be between 28mm and 33mm", against a photograph 48 mm tall. As a share of the frame, which is what a digital file is judged on, that works out to 58.4–68.7% of the photo's height — a narrower band than either the US or the UK publishes.
The eye-line rule is published the same way: as a minimum distance up from the bottom edge of the poster’s worked example, counted in pixels rather than stated as a proportion. Against the frame that is at least 54% up from the bottom of the photo. The poster gives a floor and no ceiling, so the row here gives a floor and no ceiling.
The background row is the one place this site is stricter than its source. The poster words it "white or close to white"; the spec measured here reads Plain white, because an automated check needs one target rather than a family of near-whites. Shoot against plain white and both readings are satisfied at once.
40–120 KB is a window with a bottom as well as a top, and a narrow one. A modern phone original overshoots the ceiling; a photograph that has been through a chat app, an email client or a web-optimised export drops under the floor. The floor is the half that surprises people, because nothing about an over-compressed photograph looks wrong on screen and it is refused before the crop tool opens.
What COVA says when it refuses your file, and what each message means
COVA validates in two places. The messages below all come from the crop pop-up, before your photograph is assessed as a photograph at all — the first four are file checks, the last two are the crop tool describing its own behaviour, and the wording is the portal’s own, written into the tool’s script. The verdict that judges the picture arrives afterwards, on the main form.
| "Please select a digital image with the correct file format." | Thrown on the file extension, before anything opens. An iPhone .heic and a .webp are turned away here. Renaming a .heic to .jpg passes the name check and the file is still not a JPEG. |
|---|---|
| "Please choose a digital image equal to or more than … pixels in dimension." | Your original is under the low end of 354×472 to 420×560 pixels on one side or the other. It measures the file you selected, not the crop you are about to make — which is why a photo already cropped to passport size fails before the cropper opens. |
| "Error: The uploaded image cannot be less than … in file size." | The floor of 40–120 KB. A minimum, not a maximum, and the opposite of what most applicants are braced for. |
| "Error: Cannot select a file of 0 Byte" | The file carries no image data — usually a cloud placeholder that has not finished downloading onto the device. |
| "This application will not crop an image if the image does not fill the box." | From the crop tool’s own help panel. The guidance box must sit entirely on your image. If you have zoomed or dragged so that part of the frame hangs over empty space, the crop will not save — and empty space above your head cannot be invented, so that one is a reshoot, standing further back. |
| "The photo has been uploaded for verification. Please close the window!" | Not a pass. The crop has been sent for checking and the verdict appears on the main form, not in the pop-up. The photo is handed back through a browser cookie, so a private or heavily locked-down window can leave the photo box empty. |
That table is the file gate. The picture gate is separate: it runs after the crop is submitted and reports as a check failure rather than a named rule, so the message for a badly composed photo is far less specific than any of these.
Why a photo from a print shop will not fit the COVA frame
The applicants who get stuck here are often the organised ones: they buy a strip of visa prints, then photograph or scan one for the upload. Three things go wrong at once.
The frames are different proportions, so filling the width of COVA’s crop box with a print pushes the top and bottom of the print outside the box — the crown or the chin goes. The head in that print was sized for a 33 mm by 48 mm photograph, so what survives the re-crop is a head that sits outside 58.4–68.7% of the photo's height. And a scan or phone shot of a small print is soft, low in detail, and often light enough to land under the floor of 40–120 KB.
The fix is not a better scan. It is to treat the two as two outputs of one sitting — one original photograph, cropped twice:
- For COVA: a JPEG at 354×472 to 420×560 pixels, inside 40–120 KB, head at 58.4–68.7% of the photo's height, eyes at least 54% up from the bottom of the photo.
- For the counter: a 33×48 mm print on glossy photo paper, kept flat, unfolded and unmarked.
- Both from the same original, shot against a plain, evenly lit wall — the rule reads Plain white — with the head square to the camera inside 20° or less.
The paper finish is a rule rather than a preference: the visa centres ask for a glossy finish and a clean, uncreased, unscratched print. Few corridors say anything about paper at all.
Glasses, head coverings, ears: where China differs from everyone else
This is where a photograph made for another country fails, because China’s appearance rules are not the same rules — and in one case they are the opposite.
On glasses the poster is permissive and conditional: "Eyeglasses are allowed in the photo only if the lenses are not tinted and there is no glare, shadows, or frames obscuring the eyes." Set that beside 8 FAM 402.1, the State Department’s passport photo adjudication manual, which states that "Eyeglasses are not acceptable unless they cannot be removed for medical reasons", and beside GOV.UK, which tells UK applicants to "not wear glasses in your photo unless you have to do so". Three authorities, three positions, and only one of them lets you keep them on as a matter of course.
| Glasses | Permitted if the lenses are untinted and no glare, shadow or frame obscures the eyes. Taking them off removes the question. |
|---|---|
| Head coverings | The poster: "Hats or other head coverings are only allowed if worn for religious reasons and if they do not obscure any facial features." |
| Ears | The requirement pages published by the Chinese visa service list the ears among the features that must be visible. The US manual says the reverse in as many words — "the ears do not have to be visible" — so a photo made to the US spec can fail here on a rule it was never held to. |
| Head position | The poster publishes a numeric tolerance "for left or right tilt (Yaw and Roll)": 20° or less. Most authorities only ask you to face the camera. |
| Clothing | A top matching the background is its own listed failure. Where the rule reads Plain white, a white or very pale shirt erases the shoulder line. |
The clothing rule has a mechanism: a checker finds your head by finding where you stop and the background starts, so white against white leaves no edge to find. Mid or dark tones are the safe choice here.
Hair is held to the same visibility standard: a fringe reaching the eyebrows reads as an obstruction, not a hairstyle.
Recency, retries, and what happens after three failed uploads
The photograph must have been taken within the last six months and must look like you now. No automated check can read that second half — it is the one condition only you can enforce. If your hair, weight, facial hair or eyewear have changed since, the date on the file stops being the point.
The retry behaviour is worth knowing before you are inside it. The upload is capped: after three unsuccessful attempts the system stops taking the file and directs you to bring a printed photograph to the visa centre, where staff scan and upload it for you. Until then the form lets you complete every other section with nothing attached, which is why the photo problem is so often discovered last.
So resubmitting the same file is not free — each attempt spends one of three, and the photograph has to be corrected between tries. It is also the second reason to leave a sitting with both outputs: the print the counter wants anyway is what gets you past a used-up upload.
Measure a photo you already have
Every rule above except recency is measurable, and most of them cannot be judged by eye. Head height, eye line, tilt angle, background uniformity and file weight are numbers, and a photograph that looks entirely reasonable is routinely outside one of them. These are the checks a China visa photo is held to here:
- Exactly one face, looking straight ahead
- Head sized 58.4–68.7% of frame
- Eyes positioned at least 54% up from the bottom
- Head tilt within 20°
- Background replaced with pure white
- Even, uniform background
- Sharp focus — no blur
- Natural exposure — not too dark or bright
The check is free, needs no account, and reports each measurement against the published band rather than handing down a verdict. Where it produces a file, that file is 354×472 to 420×560 JPEG · 40–120 KB · pure white background — the 33×48 mm print remains a separate job.
One disclosure, because a guide that hides its conflict of interest is not worth citing. This service replaces the background and crops the photograph: it edits the file. We have not been able to source a published Chinese rule stating whether a software-edited photograph is acceptable for a visa application, so we do not claim our output is acceptable to COVA, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does. The narrower claim is the one we can stand behind and you can check: the file matches the published measurements, and the report shows you every one of them.