Get any photo under 20 KB
Online application forms often have strict upload limits. Exam registrations, job portals, scholarship and government websites commonly ask for a photo under 20–50 KB and a signature under 10–20 KB, usually as a JPG. A picture straight from a phone camera is several megabytes — hundreds of times too large. This page is set up to shrink images below 20 KB in one step, right in your browser.
How the compressor reaches 20 KB
- Quality first. The image is re-saved as a JPG at different quality levels to find the highest quality that is still under 20 KB.
- Then size. If even a low quality is too big, the image is scaled down a little and the search runs again. This repeats until the file fits.
- You see the result. The final file size and dimensions are listed next to each image, so you can check them against the form's requirements before uploading.
Because the tool keeps the best quality that fits, results usually end up just below the limit rather than far below it.
Tips for photos and signatures
- Crop first. A tightly cropped face or signature looks much sharper at 20 KB than a wide shot. Use Crop Image before compressing.
- Scan signatures on white paper in good light. A clean white background compresses far better than a grey, shadowy one.
- Check the required dimensions. Some forms also specify pixel sizes, such as 200 × 230 px for a photo. Resize to those dimensions with Resize Image, then compress.
- Start from the original. Compressing an image that has already been compressed several times leads to blocky artefacts.
- Keep the JPG format unless the form asks for something else.
Typical results
| Original | Result at 20 KB |
|---|---|
| 3–5 MB phone photo | Around 400–600 px wide, under 20 KB |
| Scanned signature (A4 crop) | Clear dark strokes, under 20 KB |
| Passport-size photo (≈ 600 × 600 px) | Usually fits with only small quality loss |
The exact dimensions depend on how much detail the picture contains — a plain background needs fewer bytes than a busy one.
Private by design
ID photos and signatures are personal. Here they are processed entirely by your browser: nothing is uploaded, stored or seen by anyone else. You can even disconnect from the internet after the page loads.
Other sizes
Need a little more room? Use Compress Image to 50KB or Compress Image to 100KB. For full control over quality and output format, open the main Compress Image tool.