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Common fix · Photos

The form says your photo is too big

By Updated How we write these

2 min read

What you’ll end up with

A photo under the limit that still looks like a photo.

Government and exam portals usually state a hard limit in kilobytes — 100 KB, 200 KB, sometimes 50 KB — and often specific pixel dimensions as well. They rarely say how to hit either, and a phone photo arrives ten or twenty times over.

Most tools make you guess at a quality percentage and check the result. Working backwards from the number is faster and gives a better-looking photo, because it finds the highest quality that still fits rather than a round number that overshoots.

What to do

  1. Match the pixel dimensions first, if they gave any

    If the form specifies something like 413 × 531, set that before touching the file size. Resizing is what makes the file small in the first place, and doing it afterwards would undo the compression work.

    Resize to exact pixels

  2. Compress to the exact limit

    Type the number the form asked for. The tool searches for the best quality that lands under it and shows you the result before you save, so you are not submitting something you have not looked at.

    Compress to a size

  3. Check the format is one they accept

    Most portals want JPG. If your photo is a PNG or a HEIC, convert it — a PNG photograph is several times larger than the JPG of the same picture, which is often the whole reason it will not fit.

    Convert the format

Worth knowing

  • Many portals also set a minimum size, to stop people submitting something unusably small. If yours does, aim between the two rather than as low as possible.
  • A photo of a photo, or a screenshot of one, loses quality twice. Start from the original file wherever you can.

Questions

How do I get a photo under 100 KB?

Resize it to the dimensions the form asks for, then use Compress Image with 100 KB as the target. The resize usually does most of the work.

Why does the portal still reject it?

Usually the format or the dimensions rather than the size — check whether it wants JPG specifically, and whether there is a minimum size or an exact pixel requirement.

Will it still be readable at 50 KB?

For a head-and-shoulders photo at ID dimensions, yes. The smaller the pixel dimensions, the less compression has to do.

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