Photo and signature size for SSC, IBPS, UPSC forms — exact KB, free
Almost every government exam form in India — SSC, IBPS, UPSC, railways, state police — asks for the same two uploads: a passport photo and a signature, both as JPG, both inside a strict kilobyte limit. Get the size wrong and the portal rejects the file; get it very wrong and the application itself is at risk. The limits are small because the portals store lakhs of applications, and a 4 MB phone photo would grind them to a halt.
What the portals actually ask for
There is no single rule — each notification sets its own — but the pattern barely changes. A photograph is usually wanted as a JPG between 20 KB and 50 KB, roughly passport-sized. A signature is usually a JPG between 10 KB and 20 KB, signed in black or blue ink on plain white paper. UPSC and IBPS follow the same shape with slightly different numbers, which is why the first rule of this whole exercise is: read the file-size line in your notification, not someone's blog summary of last year's.
One real change to know: SSC CGL moved to live photo capture — the photo is taken through your webcam or phone during the application, and uploading an old photo gets the form rejected. The signature, though, is still an uploaded JPG of 10–20 KB. Other exams still take uploaded photos, so the steps below cover both.
Make the photo the right size
Start from the clearest photo you have — a phone picture in daylight against a plain light background. Open the image compressor, type the target the notification asks for (say 30), and press Compress. The tool finds the highest quality that fits under your number, shrinking the pixels only if it must. If the form also demands the 35×45 mm passport shape, run it through the passport photo tool first, then compress the result.
Make the signature the right size
Sign on plain white paper with a black or blue pen — a normal running signature, not block capitals. Photograph it in good light or scan it, crop close to the ink, and compress it to the 10–20 KB band the same way. Check the preview before you upload: blurred, tiny, or tilted signatures are among the top reasons forms get rejected, alongside files outside the KB band and the wrong format (PNG or HEIC instead of JPG).
Do it without uploading anything
Exam documents are identity documents, and uploading them to a random converter is exactly the kind of thing you should not do. Everything here runs inside your browser: the photo never leaves your device, there is no account, and nothing is stored. Compress, download, upload to the portal, done.