Visa photos

Goals

1. A traveler, including the least technical, takes an acceptable visa photo alone with a phone in under five minutes.
2. Every problem the visa site would flag is flagged first, beside the photo, with what to change.
3. The file meets the site's format rules exactly: dimensions, format and size.
4. The photo and its passport page are kept with the person's other documents for the trip.

Non-goals

• Applying for the visa. The person uploads the files on the official site themselves.
• Retouching: changing the background, skin, eyes or anything else in the face. The portal rejects photos "captured from another source", and editing is the likeliest way to look like one.
• Printed photos. A 4x6 print layout can come later (see Open questions).

Where things stand

• Vietnam's rules are recorded with quotes and dates in Vietnam visa photos: what the official sources say.
• Travel already has owner-only uploads (JPEG typed from its bytes) and per-person records; this feature stores through them.

How it works

The flow

1. Choose the photo: a country and a document (Vietnam, e-visa portrait; or Vietnam, passport data page). The page lists that document's rules in plain words.
2. Take it: the camera opens (front camera by default, or the back one for someone else to take it) with an outline where the head goes. Live hints say what to change ("Move back", "Look straight at the camera", "More light on your face") until everything is green, then a three-second countdown takes the picture. Uploading an existing photo works too.
3. See the result: the photo as it will be sent, cropped to 4:6, with each rule passed or failed beside it, and what to do about any that failed.
4. Confirm what a camera cannot check: no glasses, no hat (religious head covering allowed with the face fully visible), polite clothes, taken today.
5. Save and download: saved to the person's uploads as a visa photo with its check results; downloaded as a JPEG ready for the portal.

The rules, as data

A requirement set names a country, a document, and its rules. Each rule says what it checks, its source (official, or Travel's own guidance where official sources say nothing), whether it fails or only warns, and how it is checked: measured on the photo, or confirmed by the person.

Vietnam e-visa portrait:

Rule	Value	Source	Checked
Size	4 x 6 cm (aspect 2:3)	official	made so
File	JPEG, at most 2 MB	official	made so, and refused on save if not
Pixels	945 x 1417 (600 dpi)	Travel	made so
One face	exactly one	official (portal check)	measured
Looking straight	head turned or tilted at most 8 degrees	official (portal check)	measured
Face large enough	head at least 425 camera pixels tall, so the photo is at most a 2x enlargement	official (portal check), Travel's figure	measured
Head size	head 50 to 70 percent of the height, centered	Travel	measured, warns
Eyes open, mouth closed		guidance	measured, warns
White background	bright, unsaturated, even, measured around the head in the whole camera frame	official	measured
Sharp and well lit	no blur, no strong shadow across the face	official ("image quality")	measured
No glasses		official	confirmed by the person
No hat	religious covering allowed	official	confirmed by the person
Polite clothes		official	confirmed by the person
Recent	taken within six months	official ("recent"), Travel's six months	confirmed; a new photo is today's

Vietnam e-visa passport data page: JPEG at most 2 MB; the whole page with all four corners; the photo and the machine-readable lines readable; flat, no glare. Checked by an outline to fit the page in, a sharpness and glare check, and the person's confirmation; reading the MRZ on the phone comes later.

Checks on the phone

The browser runs MediaPipe's face landmarker (@mediapipe/tasks-vision, its model file served from Travel itself). It gives each face 478 points, the head's rotation, and expression scores, from which come: the number of faces, the head's yaw, pitch and roll, the head's size and position, whether the eyes are open and the mouth closed. Background, light and sharpness are measured on the pixels: brightness and color around the head (in the whole camera frame, which shows more wall than the crop; too little wall is a warning to step back), the difference between the face's two sides, and edge contrast in the face. MediaPipe needs WebGL; a browser without it is told so and asked to use a phone's Chrome or Safari. Nothing is sent anywhere to be checked.

Saving

Saving uploads the made JPEG through Travel's uploads (owner-only, typed from its bytes) and records a visa photo: whose, which requirement set, the check results, and when. The server checks again what it can on its own (JPEG, dimensions, size) and refuses a file that breaks the format rules. The Visa photos page lists a person's saved photos by trip document, with Download.

Phasing

1. Vietnam portrait (this draft): requirement data, live camera with hints, result checks, save and download.
2. Vietnam passport page: page outline, glare and sharpness, confirmation.
3. More countries as trips need them, each a requirement set with its sources page.
4. On a trip: each traveler's visa photos listed under the trip's documents (the main PRD's 4.6).

Risks

• The portal's checks are a black box. Travel's checks are modeled on its messages, not its code. Mitigated by keeping thresholds conservative and testing with a real application before the December trip.
• Phones differ. Front cameras on older phones are soft and dark. Mitigated by the light and sharpness checks, and by the back-camera mode for someone else to take it.
• The model file is 3.6 MB. Loaded only on the photo page, cached after the first time.

Open questions

Answer each question in place; your answers are saved for everyone reading this page.