Asda Passport Photo

Taking a passport photo has never been as simple as it is today; some of you may even be too young to remember when taking a passport photo was much more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. But once you have taken your passport photo, what do you do with it? Where do you print it? How do you print it? These questions might be running through your head right now, and we have a straightforward answer for you: Asda.

That’s right, Asda the supermarket, you surely know it by now, it’s famous for its array of freshly baked goods such as muffins that taste like they were baked in heaven itself, as well as their very own clothing line, George, which we have all bought clothing from at one time or another.

It’s not just muffins and clothes that Asda has on offer, but videogames, board games, toys, electronics, food, movies and if you’re lucky you might even have a McDonalds in your local Asda store. But you’re not here to read about any of that; you’re here to read about one more service that Asda has available, and that is: Passport Photos. That’s right, at Asda you can get UK passport photos, either taken at their photo booth or printed in-store. There are many ways you can go about getting your passport photos with Asda and we will go through all of them, as well as the pricing, and a little lifehack that will help save you money, time and effort.

So keep reading to find out all about the wondrous world of passport photo printing with everybody’s favourite supermarket, Asda, and by the time you finish reading you will be rushing to get your Asda photo, and maybe a muffin or two, and if you do go for a muffin, see if they still have white chocolate and strawberry muffins, a personal favourite of ours.

Passport photos 

Getting a passport photo taken used to be an arduous task and one that required a lot of time, effort and money, especially when you compare it with how easy it is to get your photo these days. There were many steps that we had to take in order to get our photos, steps we are glad to see the back of.

Firstly you had to either locate a photo booth or book an appointment with a professional photographer, and because this was before mobile phones and the internet were so common and widespread we only had a few ways of doing this.

Professional photographer

To book an appointment with a professional photographer we first had to find one; this entailed looking in a special book that every household used to have, called the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages were a bastion of knowledge, if phone numbers were the knowledge you were after. It contained phone numbers of every business you could think of, from Accountants, to Photographers, all the way to Zoologists. If you could think of a professional business that was around, the Yellow Pages had the number; it even contained ads for these businesses. 

If you want to have a little fun and a giggle, go to google and search for “Adam West phone book.” You might know him best as Batman, so this little easter egg will surely give you a chuckle.

Back to looking for a photographer. Once you had found the phone number of a professional you had to call and find out if, and when, they had an appointment available. In the rare case that they didn’t you would need to phone another one. Now this had already taken a fair amount of time, but once you had your appointment the waiting began. Your appointment could have been weeks away at most, days away at the very least. 

Once the fateful day arrived you needed to spend however long you take getting ready for your appointment by dressing up, doing your hair and applying makeup if you wore any. Then you needed to spend time and money travelling to the photographer. By the time you had your photo taken you might not have even been satisfied with the results, but felt you needed to use the photo you received just because you spent so much time and money on getting it taken.

I don’t know about you but if I had spent a lot of time, effort and money on getting a photo taken only to not like how it looks, I would feel very upset.

Photo booths

If you decided to opt against a professional and go for a photo booth then you were in for an even harder time, as sadly photo booths didn’t have numbers in the phone book. You had to phone store after store to find out which stores even had one on their premises, or hope that you could remember where you saw one last time you were out. If none of this worked then you would have to spend time driving or walking around in order to find one. And because you will have spent time searching for one, you might not even be photo ready, so will have to go home, get ready and then go back to the photo booth.

Thankfully this was all before there were much stricter restrictions in place for passport photos so making sure we looked perfect was only for our own benefit, rather than for the benefit of the passport itself. It makes you wonder how we ever managed to get our passport photos taken with all of the time and effort we had to put into it.

Nowadays there is a much easier way to get our UK passport photos taken, thanks to advances in mobile technology, mobile phone apps, and printing services being more readily available than ever before. With all of this in place, taking your passport photo and having it ready very quickly is a simple matter of clicking a few buttons and being done with it.

Passport photos cheap

Now that you’ve been told how it used to be, let us tell you how it is today. You can easily get your passport photos printed for only 55p, with Asda, although it usually costs £2.50 without our little lifehack, and you’ll get multiple photos instead of just the one you would usually receive. All you will need to do is take your photo using our app, and then download the free 10 x 15 cm passport photo template that we offer. With this passport photo template you can print multiple passport pictures on one postcard-size photo by using the Asda photo printing service.

Once you have printed out your photos using this passport photo template it is a simple case of cutting the photos out, but be careful with those sharp scissors; you wouldn’t want to cut more than the photos would you! After cutting out the photos you can use one for your passport and use the rest for any other document you are applying for, or even to give to your sweetheart so they can keep a photo of you in their purse or wallet, like we used to do back in the day.

Passport photo size and requirements

These days UK passport photos tend to have stricter requirements than they used to, as before biometric photos became normal we used to be able to smile or pose in a different way. With the advent of the biometric photo, due to machine-reading of photos, came strict rules regarding how we can look and pose in the photo. We’ll get into the specifics for the requirements a little further down.

Each country will have its own size and requirements for you to follow, so you will need to ensure that when you are taking your photo, and selecting the document on our app, that you are following the exact rules for the document and country. For example, a passport photo in the United States must be 2 x 2 inches, but in the United Kingdom it must be 35 x 45 mm, which is 1.37 x 1.77 inches, which may not seem like a big difference when it comes down to it, but is a huge difference when it comes to official documents. It is because of these differences that you must be sure of the document you require the photo for. 

Thankfully with our app you will have this made easy for you as once on our app you will be able to select the country and document you require the photo for, and it will be resized and cropped automatically to meet these requirements. So whilst it is great to have the size requirements in mind when taking your photo, it’s no big deal if you forget, as long as you choose the right document.

When you choose to use our template and have your photos printed at Asda, they will be the right size for the UK passport, due to it being a UK store, so if you are looking to have your photo printed for a different document, be sure to select it when you are using their printing services, or they may print it automatically for the UK passport size.

Asda photo printing

If you’ve never had to have any photos printed before, and that’s a big possibility considering we store all of our photos on computers, phones and other electronic devices these days, you might not know how to get your photos printed at Asda. That’s where we come in, to tell you all that you need to know.

There are a few different ways that you can get your photos printed, the first of which is by going to Asda in person and choosing which photos you want printed straight from your phone. However, the most convenient way is to do it online, from the comfort of your own home, simply select the photos you want while using their website and order them to be printed at the store of your choosing, and then pick them up when it’s convenient for you.

The best option, in our personal opinion, is to use their online printing service to the fullest, and go on their website and choose from a lot of different options. You can get your photos printed in the normal way, on posters, on magnets, as photo books, on gifts. The choices are vast and you can get them printed in so many different ways it might even seem overwhelming. 

More importantly, you can use your template to have your UK passport photos printed and delivered straight to your door, but we should tell you that this will cost a little more, and it is also a service that we offer, sadly we can’t print photos on beach towels like Asda but we print the most important photo of all, the passport photo.

Asda opening hours

If you have decided that you will go to your local Asda in order to get your photos printed then the one piece of information you will need most of all is the store opening hours. It used to be that a vast majority of supermarkets in the UK opened for 24 hours a day except on Sundays, but those days are behind us as the pandemic and online shopping has curtailed these operations all but completely. Nowadays Asda stores tend to close between 8pm and midnight, depending on the store location, so be sure to check the right store or you won’t be able to get your Asda photo.

Because of the different opening and closing times of each location the only way to know for sure is to either contact the store and ask them or look online using the handy store locator tool on the Asda website. It is very easy to use and all you have to do is put in your town, city or postcode, and it will show all nearby stores and their hours of operation. Putting in your postcode is much easier as it will show a list from the nearest store to the furthest, which will let you pick the store that is the most convenient for you, which is often the nearest one.

However, you can always consider using an alternative location such as:

• Morrisons passport photo
• Boots passport photo
• Tesco passport photo

Passport photo requirements

When it comes to UK passport photos there are a lot of requirements that you must adhere to in order to ensure that your application is accepted. It is even more important with photos due to all photos needing to be biometric photos, which has been likened to a mugshot due to the way you must pose. It used to be that you would have some semblance of freedom on how you posed in your photo, but those days are behind us as passport photos need to be machine-readable, for identification purposes. This is why we must pose the way we do.

Pose

When it comes to how you pose, you must be directly facing the camera, or phone, and be looking into the lens. Whichever device you are using must be at head-height to ensure that you can face it without tilting your head in any direction, as your head must be straight. You must maintain a neutral facial expression for the photo, so smiling or frowning is forbidden. The reason you must pose this way is so that all of your facial features can be seen perfectly.

Lighting

When taking your photo you must take it at the right time of day or set up lighting to ensure that there is good lighting that shows you properly. If you must use artificial lighting instead of daylight then you must set it up in a way that casts no shadows either on the face or the background of the person being photographed. If there are shadows on the background then don’t worry too much as our app can change the background for you, however, shadows on your face can not be removed so it is very important that there are none.

Clothing and accessories

When it comes to clothing you can wear anything you like except for any kind of uniform or clothing that looks like a uniform, it is best to dress how you normally would on a regular day. It is recommended that you don’t wear a v-neck or other low-cut tops as when the photo is cropped you will appear naked in the photo.

Regarding accessories, you shouldn’t be wearing anything that covers your head unless it is for religious reasons, and if so you must have a signed statement from a religious leader in your community stating that this is the reason, although it must be worn in a way that enables the oval of your face to still be seen. No other hats or head accessories are allowed.

If you wear glasses to help you see or read then you can wear them in your passport photo, as long as the frames do not cover your eyes and that the lenses are completely see-through, although it is better to take them off. If there is any glare or reflection in your lenses then you should take them off for the photo. Tinted glasses or sunglasses are strictly forbidden.

Background

The background of your passport photo should be lightly-coloured, with white being the preferred colour. There should be no other objects or people visible in the background as this will cause your photo to be rejected. As we said above, when talking about shadows, you don’t need to worry too much as our app will change the background for you.

Size and cropping

Within regards to size, the photo must be 35 x 45 mm when submitting a physical photo, if you are submitting a digital photo then it should be 600 x 750 pixels with a file size of between 50KB and 10MB. The size of your head in the photo also has a size requirement of between 29 and 34 mm. If you utilise the service of a photo tool such as passport photo online then the cropping will be done for you, leaving you with one less thing to worry about.

PhotoAiD

We’ve mentioned our service a few times now so it’s probably time for us to tell you all about it, the best way to get your Asda passport photo.

PhotoAiD is both a website and a passport photo app, a photo booth that fits in your pocket. On our site you can find countless pages of information relating to different documents for different countries, as well as blog posts on various subjects. So not only can you get your UK digital passport photo with us, you can have a good read at the same time.

Our app can be found on both the App Store and the Google Play Store, meaning it doesn’t matter what device you have as it will work on both Apple and Android, so now there’s no excuse not to give it a go.

Our app uses advanced AI algorithms and is the same AI that is used by governmental agencies to verify and approve photos that you have submitted for official documents, this is why we are so confident that you will be happy with our service. What our app does is it looks at your photo, decides if it is suitable for the document you are applying for and then makes some necessary changes, which we’ll detail below, then gives it back to you and lets you know what needs changing if changes are required, or that it is perfect and ready for your application. 

Background removal

As we stated above you must have a lightly-coloured or white background in a UK passport photo, as well as having no shadows, objects or people visible. What our app does with the background is check it against the requirements and if it determines it to be incorrect it will remove and replace the background with the required colour, meaning you don’t have to stress so much about having the right one.

Resizing and cropping

Cropping a photo can sometimes be a difficult thing to do, unless you’re an expert with cropping programs, due to the strict size requirements, as well as the required head size in the photo. Our app will crop your photo for you to ensure that it is the perfect size and your head is the size it needs to be for the document you are applying for. As well as cropping we will resize the photo for you and ensure it meets both the digital requirements and physical requirements.

Verification

One of the unique features of our tool is that it will verify if your picture is suitable for the document you are applying for, and if it says it is then your picture will be accepted by the passport office. Not only can your photo be verified by the AI system, but we can get real people to do manual verification as well, ensuring that your photo will be correct.

Photo delivery

Once your photo is ready and verified we can deliver it to you in two different ways. You can either order your photo digitally and receive it in your inbox within seconds, or you can utilise our print and deliver service, which will print your photo on high quality photo paper and deliver it straight to your door.

Conclusion

Now that you have read all of this about our app, you will surely be rushing to download it and reap the benefits that it can give you when it comes to your document and passport photos. Download it now in the Apple App Store or on the Google Play Store.

Just remember, you can either have your photos printed with us or get them printed with Asda, using our template, for only 55p.