This edition of the standard exceptionally remains valid until 2033.

ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005 specifies scene, photographic, digitization and format requirements for images of faces to be used in the context of both human verification and computer automated recognition. The approach to specifying scene and photographic requirements in this format is to carefully describe constraints on how a photograph should appear rather than to dictate how the photograph should be taken. The format is designed to allow for the specification of visible information discernable by an observer pertaining to the face, such as gender, pose and eye colour. The digital image format can be either ISO standard JPEG or JPEG2000. Finally, the 'best practice' appendices provide guidance on photo capture for travel documents and face recognition performance versus digital compression.

This consolidated reprint of ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005 contains the original content of ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005 and incorporates the Amendments ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Amd 1:2007 and ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Amd 2:2009 and the Technical Corrigenda ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Cor 1:2008, ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Cor 2:2008, ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Cor 3:2013, ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Cor 4:2015, and the unpublished draft of ISO/IEC 19794-5:2005/Cor 5.