How to scan a CNIC with both sides on one page
Photograph the front, photograph the back, and place them on one A4 sheet at 85.6 × 54 mm, the real card size. Printed at 100%, the copy measures the same as the card, which is what an office checking it expects.
The ID card tool does the layout for you, in your browser. ID Card Scan
Getting both sides onto one sheet
- Take the card out of its sleeve and lay it on something dark and matte.
- Photograph the front square-on, with the light coming from the side rather than from behind you.
- Turn the card over and photograph the back the same way.
- Check the crop on both sides, and drag the corners if either guess is off.
- Export one A4 page with the two sides stacked at 85.6 × 54 mm, then print it at 100%.
Why one page, and why the size matters
Offices ask for both sides on one sheet because it is one document to file rather than two to lose. They care about size because a card blown up to half a page is hard to check against the original, and a card shrunk to a stamp is unreadable. ID-1, which is 85.6 by 54 mm, is the size a CNIC, a driving licence, a passport card and a bank card all share.
The person on the other side of the counter is usually checking your copy against a card in your hand or a record on a screen, at speed, in a queue. A copy at the real size, straight, with both sides visible at once, is a copy that takes them seconds. Anything else invites the one outcome that costs you the most: come back tomorrow with a better one.
The full size guide, and when not to force the standard
The four reasons a card copy gets rejected
Glare across the number, from a flash or a plastic sleeve. A shadow across the photograph. The card cropped so tightly the edge is cut. And the two sides at visibly different sizes, which happens when they are photographed from different distances and no layout step fixes it.
All four are decided before any tool gets involved, which is the real point of this guide. The photographing takes thirty seconds to do carelessly and forty to do well, and the ten extra seconds are the difference between a copy that is accepted and an afternoon spent doing it again.
Take it out of the sleeve
This is the single biggest improvement available. Plastic over plastic reflects whatever is above you straight into the camera, and a blown-out highlight cannot be recovered by any amount of processing, because the detail is simply not in the file. Take the card out, lay it on something dark and matte, and turn the flash off; a window to one side lights it better than any flash will.
Doing it yourself against the photocopy shop
The photocopy shop wins on one thing: a working printer, right there. If you have no printer at all, the practical route is to make the PDF yourself and carry it to the shop on your phone, because then the shop prints a finished layout at 100% rather than improvising one on the glass with your card.
Handing your card itself across the counter is the part worth thinking about. A card on a copier's glass is a card someone else could copy twice, and identity documents are exactly the thing casual copies of should not exist. Making the layout yourself, on your own device, and handing over only the finished page, keeps the card in your hand.
When this tool is the wrong answer
Three cases. A passport booklet page is roughly A5 and does not belong in a card frame: scan it as an ordinary document page instead. An office that requires an attested copy needs ink from an authorised person, and no scan of any kind is that; the scan is what you take to the person who attests. And a card so worn or damaged that its details are hard to read needs replacing, not copying, because the copy faithfully preserves exactly what cannot be read.
A note on where the photographs go
An identity document is not an ordinary file, so it matters that on this site the photographs are opened in the page, processed in your device's memory, and never sent anywhere: there is no upload step and no server here that could receive one. Even so, on a shared or public computer the photographs and the finished PDF sit in that machine's memory and downloads folder while you work, so use your own device for identity documents, and delete the PDF from anywhere it does not need to remain.
Questions people ask next
What size should the copy be printed at?
100%, with no fit-to-page. The card on the sheet is placed at 85.6 × 54 mm, so a print at full size measures the same as the card in your hand. Any scaling in the print dialog undoes that.
Can I do this with a passport instead?
Not with the card layout. A passport booklet page is roughly A5 and does not belong in a card frame; photograph it as an ordinary page instead.
Colour or black and white?
Unless the office told you which, colour is the safer default: the copy is easier to check against the original, and a CNIC's tints survive. Black and white is usually accepted for routine filing, and it is cheaper at a shop, so if the copy is one of ten for a stack of forms, ask the office which they want before printing ten in colour.
Can I send the PDF by WhatsApp instead of printing it?
Often, yes: many offices now accept a copy sent to a number or an email address, and the same rules decide whether it is usable: both sides, one page, straight, readable. Remember that a copy sent into a chat stays in that chat's history and backups, so send identity documents only to offices that actually asked for them.
Is it safe to do this on a shared computer?
The photographs are not sent anywhere, but they are still in that machine's memory and downloads folder while you work, and the downloaded PDF stays there until someone deletes it. For an identity document, use your own device.