Printing 30 passport photos on one A4 sheet

A 35 × 45 mm photo is small. An A4 sheet is 210 × 297 mm. Do the arithmetic and about 30 photos fit on a single page with room for cut lines — which is why studios charge per sheet, not per photo.

How many actually fit

The exact count depends on the margin your printer cannot reach and the gap you leave for scissors. Most home printers will not print right to the paper edge, so allow 5 mm all round.

The setting that ruins everything

After printing, measure one photo with a ruler before you cut all thirty. If it reads 35 mm across, the settings were right. If it reads 33, print again with scaling off.

Paper and ink

• Glossy photo paper gives the closest result to a studio print. 180–250 gsm is the usual range.
• Plain paper works for forms that only need a pasted photo, and costs almost nothing. It will not look like a studio print.
• Print quality: high or photo. Draft mode leaves visible banding across the face.
• Let it dry before cutting glossy paper. Inkjet output smudges for a minute or two.

Cutting

Cut lines printed on the sheet help, but scissors wander. A steel ruler and a craft knife on a cutting mat give a straighter edge, and a paper trimmer is better still if you cut sheets regularly. Cut just inside the printed line so no line remains on the photo.

Several people on one sheet

A sheet does not have to be thirty copies of one face. If a whole family is applying at once, put four or five people on the same page in whatever quantities each of them needs. One sheet of paper, one print job, and nothing wasted — the tool on this site supports mixed sheets.