Guide
UPSC application photo and signature sizes
October 20, 2026 · exam forms · photo resize
UPSC’s application stages scrutinise uploads more strictly than most forms — a photo that technically passes may still fail moderation if it looks over-compressed. This is a preparation checklist that covers both the numbers and the eyeball test.
The numbers
Across recent UPSC notices (re-verify against your year’s notice — bands drift):
- Photo: JPEG, roughly 350×450 pixels and more, file size commonly between ~20 and 300 KB.
- Signature: JPEG, roughly 350×150 pixels (wide-format), commonly between ~20 and 200 KB.
- Both must be recent, high-contrast and clear; names/date stamps are specified in the notice where required.
Prep the source, then compress
The biggest quality failure in exam uploads is source failure: a photo-of-a-photo, a phone shot of a signature in dim light, a photocopier scan. Compression multiplies whatever detail the source has. So:
- Photo: shoot or select against an even background, face square to the camera, no shadows on the background wall. Crop to the portal’s pixel ratio.
- Signature: sign boldly with a black pen on blank white paper, photograph straight-on in daylight or scan at 200–300 dpi. Crop tight to the ink.
The compress step
Open the 20 KB page for the signature and the 100 KB page for the photo (band-friendly targets). The tool compresses entirely in your browser — no application copies go to a server — and reports:
- whether the cap was genuinely met (measured bytes), or
- the best reachable size with an explanation, when the image’s detail fights the cap.
Set the exact pixel dimensions in the width/height limiter when the notice names them; the ratio is preserved so faces never stretch.
Verify like a moderator
Open the result at full zoom. For photos: eyes, jaw line and the background edge should be crisp. For signatures: no grey halos around strokes, no blocking artefacts in the paper texture. If artefacts show, go back up one target (the whole point of KB bands — pick a higher target within the allowed range rather than forcing the lowest).
That final zoom is the difference between “under the cap” and “accepted”.