Compress a passport photo to the KB limit

Two systems, two numbers

India Passport Seva historically wants a JPEG around 2 × 2 inches (often implemented as roughly 630 × 810 or a square 600 px pipeline depending on the year and whether you are in the online form or a studio print). File size has sat in a 10–50 KB band for some windows and opened up toward 250 KB in others. The India passport preset on ExactKB aims at 50 KB with a 630 × 810 max box — a conservative file that still looks like a face.

US DS-160 / many visa uploads want a square JPEG, commonly 600 × 600, at most 240 KB. Use the DS-160 chip (240 KB, 600 px longest side). If you only remember “200 KB,” the 200 KB tool is close enough for many embassy pages; type 240 if the form prints that number.

What ExactKB will not do

• It will not put you on a white background.
• It will not crop a rectangle into a square or a 35 × 45 mm frame.
• It will not certify that the photo meets ICAO composition rules.

Those are photo-studio problems. Feeding a beach selfie into a 50 KB encoder just gives you a small beach selfie. Crop and background first, compress last.

Order of operations

1. Get the composition right (head size, eyes, background). Studios and some phone apps do this.
2. Export a JPEG or HEIC. If it is HEIC, you can drop it straight on HEIC to JPG.
3. Pick the India passport or DS-160 preset. Confirm the result card shows both the KB hit and the pixel box you expected.
4. If the face looks blocky at 50 KB, you probably started from a tiny crop. Recrop larger, then compress again — ExactKB prefers quality over extra shrinking when the budget allows.

Print vs upload

A 50 KB file can still print acceptably at 2 × 2 inches because passport prints are small. Do not upscale a 200 px thumbnail to 600 px and then compress — you will encode artifacts. Start from a larger original, let the preset cap the long side, then encode.

Studio print vs digital upload

If you already paid a studio, ask for the digital file they submitted, not a photo of the print on the counter. Rephotographing a 2×2 print under shop lights adds glare and a color cast that JPEG then spends bits encoding. If all you have is the print, shoot it square-on in daylight, crop to the paper edge, and use the India passport or DS-160 preset — then expect a human to still prefer a fresh capture.

Digital-only uploads (many visa sites) never need a paper print. Compress the studio JPEG or a phone capture that already matches the composition. ExactKB will not add a white background behind your hair. Tools that promise that are a different product and a different liability.

1024-byte KB vs the embassy’s “KB”

Some upload widgets compute size with 1000-byte kilobytes. A 240 KiB file is about 245.8 KB in SI units and can trip a “max 240 KB” check. If a DS-160 style field rejects a file ExactKB marked as 239 KB, uncheck the 1024-byte option and run again, or type 230 as a safety margin. We would rather you submit 230 KB than pad to a theatrical 240,000 bytes.

What “valid passport photo” actually means

File size is one line in a longer list: recent photograph, plain background, head size, eyes visible, no uniforms in some countries, no glasses in others. ExactKB is not Passport Seva, not the US Department of State, and not a photographer. Use this guide to stop failing on kilobytes. Use a studio or the official illustrated examples for everything else.