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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. 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. Below you will find more information about attaching a passport photograph to your application.
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 passport photograph is assessed when the related passport 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 passport 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, you must talk to the photographer.