Smith College Information Technology Services

The OneCard is the Smith College ID card carried by faculty, staff, and students alike. Entering students are required to send in a picture ahead of time so that their ID card can be printed and available for collection upon their arrival at Smith.

The OneCard Office accepts both hardcopy and digital ID photograph submissions as detailed in section 1 below. Both forms of submission must meet the composition requirements listed in section 2. Photographs must be received before the deadlines described in section 3.

Section 1. Submitting a Photo
Hardcopy Photos
Digital Photos
Section 2. Photo Composition Requirements
Section 3. Submission Deadlines

Section 1. Submitting a Photo

The OneCard Office strongly urges prospective students to have their photo submission taken professionally. The OneCard Office reserves the right to reject any submission not meeting the requirements of composition, format, and quality specified in this document. Owing to the high volume of photographs submitted, we regret that we cannot notify you if your submission is rejected. Accordingly we urge you to read and follow these requirements in order to avoid possibly significant delays in your check-in process at Smith.

Hardcopy Photos

The easiest way to obtain an acceptable picture for submission is to have a US-style passport picture taken by a professional photographer. This can be done inexpensively at a wide range of locations in the US and Canada. Most camera shops offer this service as do many copy centers and other retailers. For overseas students, the US embassy or consulate often maintains a list of local photographers who can meet these requirements.

The overall dimensions of the picture must be 2 inches x 2 inches (50 mm x 50 mm). The photograph must not have any borders. It must be printed on good quality photographic stock and must meet the composition requirements listed in Section 3.

The student name and Smith ID number (a 9-digit number beginning with "99" , also known as a Banner ID, Onecard ID, and "99" number), if known, should be written on the back of the photograph.

Entering School for Social Work students: Please skip to Section 3 for information on where to send your hardcopy photo.

The photograph should then be placed in Envelope A, which you will receive in the Welcome Packet from Smith after sending in your enrollment deposit. The front of Envelope A should be completed and Envelope A should then be placed in Envelope B and mailed.*

*School for Social Work students: Please note that you do not receive an envelope A or B. Please skip to Section 3 for information on where to send your hardcopy photo.

Digital Photos

Prospective students should note that there are many common mistakes made with electronic submissions that render them unacceptable despite meeting composition guidelines. The most common mistakes include resizing an image to meet the size requirements without maintaining the correct aspect ratio, enlarging an image of insufficient resolution so that the resulting image quality is poor, use of low quality digital cameras such as camera phones which produce poor images, poor editing of an existing image to remove extraneous background or other unacceptable details, and incorrect formatting of images (e.g. use of gif, tiff, pcx formats etc.).

For these reasons, the OneCard Office strongly urges you to either use a professional photographer or to submit a hardcopy picture as described above if you are not completely comfortable with digital picture editing.

The overall dimensions of the picture must be 400 pixels by 400 pixels. It must be in JPEG format and must meet the composition requirements described in section 2 below.

To submit a digital photo, send it as an email attachment to onecard@email.smith.edu. Be sure your email message and file-name meet the following requirements:

Section 2. Photo Composition Requirements

ID photo submissions not meeting the composition requirements will be rejected. Owing to the high volume of submissions, we regret that we cannot notify you if the image is rejected. Accordingly we urge you to read and follow these requirements in order to avoid possibly significant delays in your check-in process at Smith.

It should be noted that US passport photographs are in full compliance with our requirements and that many prospective students will find it significantly simpler to have a professional passport photograph taken, a quick and relatively inexpensive process widely available in the US and Canada as well as at many photographers overseas.

Positioning

Make sure the photo presents the full head from top of hair to bottom of chin; height of head as measured from bottom of chin to top of hairline should measure 1 inch to 1-3/8 inches (25 mm to 35 mm). For digital images this should be 200 to 275 pixels. In cases of large volume hair some effort should be made to include all the hair and face in the image. However the height of the face should on no account be less than one half of the overall image size.

The head must be centered within the image in accordance with the figure below. Make sure eye height is between 1-1/8 inches to 1-3/8 inches (28 mm and 35 mm or 225 to 275 pixels for digital images) from bottom of photo.

Positioning of head in photograph

Pose

The frontal pose (full-face) must be used. Rotation of the head must be less than +/- 10 degrees in every direction – up/down, rotated left/right, or tilted.

Shoulders must be square on to the camera. Subjects looking over one shoulder are unacceptable. The subject’s hands, feet, etc. should not appear in the image.

Subjects must have a natural expression, either neutral or smiling with jaw closed and with both eyes open. Eyewear or headgear is not permitted except for documented religious or medical reasons. Even in those cases, it must not obstruct any portion of the face or eyes. Examples of unacceptable expressions include, but are not limited to, a smile where the inside of the mouth is open, squinting, raised eyebrows, and frowning.

The subject must be photographed against a plain white or off-white background. Lighting must be such that there are no distracting shadows. Shadows on the face or shadowed eye-sockets are unacceptable.

Section 3. Submission Deadlines

The due date for photo submission, both electronic and hardcopy, is June 1st for students starting in the Fall semester, and December 1st for students starting in the Spring semester.

For School for Social Work students, the hardcopy deadline is April 1, 2012. Hard copy photos must be sent to the following School for Social Work office:

The electronic deadline for School for Social Work students is May 18, 2012. Digital photos must be emailed to the OneCard office at onecard@email.smith.edu. Please pay special attention to Section 2 regarding Photo Composition Requirements.

Photographs received after those dates may not be processed in time for advance printing of ID cards.

If you miss the deadline:

For students starting in the Fall who are unable to meet the deadline, pictures can be taken and cards produced at Central Check In. This may require significant time waiting in line depending upon volume.

Students starting in the Spring and School for Social Work students who cannot meet the deadline will have to come to the OneCard Office in Stoddard 24C during our regular drop-in hours (Tuesday-Friday, 1:30-3:30 pm) to obtain their ID card.

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