md95065

I disagree with your conclusion.

From personal experience I can confirm that, in practice, many Walgreens *cannot* produce UK sized passport photographs for exactly the reason that you mentioned - operator ignorance. That being the case, the advice to avoid Wallgreens is still good.

durham_lad

Last year both my son and I needed to renew our UK passports, myself from England and he from Texas. I had to send in my original US passport and he had to send in a color copy of his US passport. (Both returned promptly)

I expect all Walgreens machines are the same and it is operator experience that counts. In towns with lots of expats the operators are much more likely to know what to do. In the 12 years we lived in a town with lots of corporate headquarters and ex pats from many countries we used Walgreens several times, including last year when my son got his passport renewed.

Pulaski

You might think so, but that is not the case ..... Lansbury knows for a fact that there is a machine in at least one Walgreen's that can't print UK passport photos because there had been a photo printer that could produce UK passport photos, and they took it out and replaced it with one that couldn't. He knew it had been possible, and the operator knew it had been possible, but the new machine didn't have the capability.

I also visited two Walgreen's and, because I was so sure, thanks to posts on BE, that there was a British passport photo option, I stood with the operator in each store, and went through every row of every pull-down menu, and all to no avail.

durham_lad

I stand corrected.

I just messaged my daughter in Santa Monica and she also used Walgreens for her last UK passport photo, but she said that the operator didn’t use the machine and instead used a hand held camera. I guess that the Walgreens machine option is indeed very much on the way out.

DottM

I recently had to take photos of my newborn for her passports and used the app “My Photo Lite” which allows you to select the intended country and take as many attempts as you want. Once you’re happy it saves a 6x4” image which you can just print at cvs etc. it’s cheap and allows you to take as many attempts as you want.

The girl at the passport office actually commented on how well we had done getting such a good pic.

mrken30

That's great advice, I am assuming you are using iphone as I could not find the app. The app I found on android was "Passport ID Photo Maker Studio: Photo Size Editor"

branmin

To conclude this, found Walgreen assistant very helpful. She had a camera and the software did allow for UK sizes. However, as I originally mentioned, what she didn't have for whatever reason was a cutter for UK sizing...Regardless, I tried as a poster stated here to use a box cutter and nearly messed it up but scissors did the job. They charged just under $32.00 for two photos which I thought was high, particularly as I am a AAA member and later found out it's free...............so then went to UPS, who wanted anything between $85-$135.00 for basically a large envelope and depending on when I wanted it to get there. So ended up at the post office and it came to $80.00 for guaranteed Fed Express Global for 2 day delivery!!!!!
What a business..should I be so lucky to live another 10 years................+-))))))))

MarylandNed

I'm not sure what "didn't use the machine" means. A hand held camera doesn't normally print photos - so the photos must have been printed using something else. My wife had UK size passport photos done at our local Walgreens. The operator used a camera to take the photo in one part of the store and then transferred the image into a machine in another part of the store to print the photos - using a template that the machine had for UK size photos.

durham_lad

Yes, that is exactly what happened.

kins

We had UK passport photos done in Walgreens a month ago - no bother.

We didn't send any color photocopies of DD's US passport - no problem there either.

UK passport arrived a couple of days ago.