Photo and signature sizes for Indian exam and government forms

Common requirements

• UPSC / SSC photo: roughly 200×230 to 350×350 px, 20–50 KB, JPEG, light background, name and date sometimes printed below.
• UPSC / SSC signature: about 140×60 px, 10–20 KB, signed in black ink on white.
• PAN (NSDL/UTIITSL) photo: 213×213 px, up to ~30 KB. Signature: 235×90 px, similar limit.
• Passport photo: 35×45 mm (about 413×531 px at 300 DPI), 51 mm head-to-chin band, plain light background.
• Bank / KYC: usually a passport photo and a signature scan under 100 KB.

Always read the specific portal's instruction page — these vary by year and by exam. The ranges above are typical, not universal.

How to hit the numbers

1. Start from the highest-quality original you have — a phone photo in good light, or a signature scanned or photographed on white paper.
2. Crop to the right aspect ratio first (square for PAN, 35:45 for passport), then resize to the target pixels.
3. Compress to the KB limit last. Drop quality in small steps; going straight to the minimum makes the photo blocky.
4. Save as JPEG for photos. A signature can go as JPEG or PNG — check which the portal accepts.

Doing it here

The photo-resize, signature-resize and image-compressor tools take a target size in pixels and KB and do the crop-resize-compress steps in your browser — the image is never uploaded. There are presets for PAN, passport and the common exam sizes.

Printing them

For a physical photo, set 300 DPI at the final mm size before printing, and use photo paper. A 35×45 mm passport photo printed at screen resolution comes out soft — the pixel count has to match the print size.