Cambodia Visa Document Scans: How Americans Upload Passport and Photo Without Getting Flagged

Glare, blur, and the fixes that stop a resubmission

Most scan flags come down to three things: glare, blur, and framing. Each has a specific fix, and once you know the move, you will not hit it again. These are the patterns we see most often on US passport uploads, in order of how frequently they bounce a file.

• Laminate glare. The shiny coating on a US passport bio page throws light straight back at the lens, washing out the center. The fix: tilt the passport a few degrees so the bright reflection slides off to the side, then shoot. You only need a slight angle — keep the page close to flat so the text does not skew.
• Soft focus and motion blur. A handheld phone at arm-and-a-half feet drifts just enough to soften the small print. Brace your elbows on the desk, tap to lock focus, and hold your breath for the shot. If your phone has a slight shutter delay, wait it out before moving.
• Cropped corners. Filling the frame edge to edge clips a corner the moment your hand shifts. Leave a clear margin around all four sides so the whole page, including the edges, is captured.
• Shadow across the page. Your own phone or head can cast a shadow over the bio page under a single overhead light. Use diffuse side daylight instead, and move so your shadow falls away from the passport.
• Wrong page or partial spread. Photograph the bio page — the one with your photo and details — not the cover or a blank visa page. Capture only that page flat, not an angled spread of two pages.

A blurry scan rejected at upload is the single most fixable problem in the whole application. None of these require a retake of more than a minute, and none cost a cent. If your first capture is borderline, take three or four and pick the sharpest — phones are free to shoot, and the validator only ever sees the one you choose to upload.

Uploading a photo that the auto-checker accepts

The photo is the other half of the documents needed, and it carries its own upload rules. The Cambodia eVisa wants a recent passport-style headshot against a plain white or off-white background, sized as a 4×6 cm equivalent, face fully visible, head centered, neutral expression — no smile, no glasses, no hats. Most American applicants shoot this on a phone against a white wall, and it clears every time when the file itself is right.

File format and size trip up more US applicants than the pose. Save the photo as a JPEG, ideally 600×600 pixels or larger. Modern iPhones shoot in HEIC by default, which the upload may not accept, so convert to JPEG first — in the Photos app you can export or share it as a JPEG copy. Avoid uploading the raw 12-megapixel original; an oversized file can be refused outright, and you only need a clean square crop of your head and shoulders, not the whole room behind you.

Do not edit, filter, or beautify the image. The auto-checker looks for natural skin texture and rejects heavily smoothed or color-shifted photos, so the portrait mode that flatters you on social media works against you here. A plain, unfiltered, evenly lit headshot is exactly what clears. For the full size, background, and crop specifics, the Cambodia eVisa photo requirements for Americans lay it out field by field, and the photo size and file format guide for Americans covers the pixel and megabyte limits in detail.

What happens if a scan or photo is flagged

A flagged upload is not a rejection of your trip, and it is not a lost fee. It is a request to re-upload a cleaner file, and it is one of the most routine things that happens on an application. You get an email with a clear, specific list of what to redo — usually a fresh photo against a white wall, or a passport scan without glare. There is no extra charge to fix it.

Speed is the only thing that matters once you are flagged. Reply with the corrected file quickly and the 3-business-day clock keeps running rather than resetting from scratch. Free resubmission is part of the all-in price for both the Tourist eVisa at $80 USD and the Business eVisa at $90 USD, so you are not penalized for needing a second go at the upload. Open the email, read the exact reason, fix that one thing using the moves above, and re-upload — most corrected files clear on the next pass.

If you would rather not deal with a flag at all, the simplest insurance is to check your own captures before you submit, against the same list the validator uses. Read your scan back, confirm the photo is a plain unfiltered JPEG, and you sidestep the whole round trip. When you want the requirements as a single tick-box list to run through before you upload, the Cambodia eVisa required documents checklist for US citizens does exactly that.