Passport photo size: getting under the KB limit

The upload page states a maximum in kilobytes and refuses anything above it. Type that number below — it is pre-filled with the most common one — and the tool finds the largest version of your photo that fits under it.

Your photo never leaves this tab. The resizing happens inside your own browser — nothing is uploaded to us, and we cannot see the file.

Your image

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JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 25 MB. On a phone you can shoot it now.

Target size (KB)

Pixel size for this document: commonly 4.5 × 3.5 cm (about 350 × 450 px at 200 dpi). Set it under “More options” if the form checks dimensions as well as weight.

Two different rules, often confused

Application forms usually state two things about a photo, and people fix one while failing the other. They are unrelated, and the tool on this page only solves the first.

File weight, in KB

How many bytes the file occupies. This is what gets your upload rejected with a message about size, and this is what the tool above fixes exactly.

Physical size and proportions

How the face is framed — the centimetres, the ratio, the space above the head. Compression cannot change these. Cropping can, and you should do it before compressing.

Where these numbers come from, and what to do with them. The limits below are the ones applicants most commonly encounter, collected from the requirements published by application portals. They are not an official source and they change. The number that matters is the one printed on the upload page in front of you — read it there and type it into the tool. Everything on this page works for any figure you enter.

Limits people meet most often

Commonly encountered photo upload limits
Limit	In bytes	What it means in practice
20 KB	20 480	Tight. Crop to head and shoulders first — details here.
50 KB	51 200	The most common figure, and comfortable for a portrait — details here.
100 KB	102 400	Roomy; full resolution usually survives — details here.

Applying for a PAN card instead? That form has its own page.

Passport photo questions

What file size does a passport application actually require?

It depends on the portal and it changes. The limits people meet most often are 20, 50 and 100 KB, which is why those are the presets here. Read the number off the upload page you are actually on and type it in — this tool will hit whatever you enter between 5 and 5000 KB.

Does compressing change the photo’s dimensions in centimetres?

Not by itself. Compression changes how many bytes the picture occupies, not its proportions. If the tool has to reduce pixel dimensions to reach a very tight limit it says so — and the aspect ratio still stays the same, so a correctly cropped photo remains correctly cropped.

Is it safe to upload my passport photo to a website to shrink it?

To most websites, that is a real question worth asking — you are handing a photograph of your face to a stranger’s server. Here there is nothing to ask about: the file is never transmitted. All the work happens in your browser, and you can verify that in the network inspector.

The photo has GPS data from my phone. Does that get submitted?

Not from here. The result is redrawn without any metadata, so location, timestamp and camera model are gone. Orientation is the one thing kept, so a portrait photo does not arrive sideways.