Drop your passport photo, get a JPEG under the DFA’s 9 MB cap at the best quality that fits — without cropping or retouching it. Nothing is uploaded; it all runs in your browser.
Irish Passport Online applications — both the Passport Book and the Passport Card — take one digital photo that must be in colour, JPEG format, not less than 715 pixels wide and 951 pixels in height, and not larger than 9 MB. It must not be a scanned photo, must not have compression artefacts, must not be digitally enhanced or changed, and must not contain barrel or other lens distortion. Three routes get you a valid file: have someone else photograph you on a phone or camera (selfies are not allowed, and don't use zoom), get a digital photo from a photo shop, or use a participating photo booth (Photo Me or IDstation) and enter the code it gives you. This page is preset to the 9 MB cap with no pixel size set — both choices are deliberate and explained below.
There is no minimum file size in the Irish spec, and “not digitally enhanced or changed” means the honest first advice is: if your photo is already a JPEG of at least 715×951 pixels and at most 9 MB, upload the original untouched and close this tab. The “no compression artefacts” rule is the other direction — it's about photos that have been crushed too small (message apps, aggressive resizers) until JPEG blocking shows. Don't run your photo through anything that shrinks it toward some tiny target; 9 MB is a ceiling, not a goal.
First: the file is over 9 MB — common for a full-resolution camera JPEG or a high-end phone photo. PixFit binary-searches for the best JPEG quality that fits under the cap and keeps full resolution; at a ceiling this generous the result is visually indistinguishable from the original, which is exactly what “no compression artefacts” wants. Second: it's an iPhone HEIC — the format iPhones save by default, which isn't the JPEG the DFA asks for. Drop it straight in; PixFit decodes it in your browser and outputs a JPEG. In both cases keep your original file — the re-encode also strips EXIF metadata, including the GPS position of wherever the photo was taken.
715×951 is a minimum, not a target: cropping to exactly those pixels throws away resolution for no benefit, and the head-to-mid-torso framing is checked by the Passport Service's reviewers, not by a pixel count. So this page presets no dimensions — fix the bytes, leave the framing alone. A photo smaller than 715×951 can't be fixed by upscaling either; resampled pixels add no detail and the sharpness rules still apply — retake it or go back to the shop for the full-size file. One thing you genuinely don't need to fix: a sideways photo. The DFA's own guidance says an upload that arrives rotated will not affect your application — the preview page has rotate buttons and the Passport Service rotates it for you. (PixFit applies the orientation tag to the pixels anyway, so its output opens the right way up everywhere.)
The first rule on the DFA list: the digital photo must not be a scanned photo. No file tool can fix that — if all you have is a print, use a booth code, a photo shop, or a fresh photo taken by someone else. Prints belong to the paper route: 4 identical photos of 35×45 to 38×50 mm, no more than 6 months old, with your witness writing the application form number on the back of two of them — a different spec this page doesn't handle.
Everything the Passport Service actually reviews photos for: plain light background with good contrast, no shadows on the face or behind the head, natural skin tones, straight-on centred pose with a neutral expression, eyes open and visible, no red-eye, no hair across the eyes, and glasses only if the lenses are transparent with no glare and the frames don't cover any part of the eye (sunglasses are out). The photo must be less than 6 months old — that's an ICAO rule, so “the one from my last passport” won't pass. Babies and children have their own posing rules, and the portal has a cropping tool it may prompt you to use for small children. Check the current guidelines at ireland.ie before you submit. Applying elsewhere? See the UK passport, Canada citizenship and Australian citizenship pages.