Looking for a quick way to compress your image to 20KB without losing quality? Our free online image compressor helps you reduce image size while maintaining visual clarity. Perfect for web uploads, emails, and optimizing website performance, this tool supports JPG, PNG, and WEBP formats.
If you have ever filled an online application form in India, you have run into this number. SSC, IBPS, SBI, NDA, railways, state PSC boards — most of them cap the candidate photo at 20KB to 50KB, and many specify 20KB exactly. The reasoning is partly legacy: older servers and bandwidth constraints set these limits years ago, and they have never been updated even as phone cameras now shoot 4–6MB photos by default.
The gap between a 4MB camera photo and a 20KB portal requirement is a factor of 200. Emailing, WhatsApp-ing, or trying to crop in a photo editor won't close that gap reliably. You need a dedicated compressor that targets the exact byte size.
| Exam / Board | Photo limit | Signature limit | Dimensions (px) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSC (all posts) | 20KB | 10KB | 100×120 |
| IBPS PO / Clerk / SO | 50KB | 20KB | 200×230 / 140×60 |
| SBI PO / Clerk | 50KB | 20KB | 200×230 / 140×60 |
| NDA / CDS | 40KB | 40KB | Not specified |
Verify these against the official notification PDF for your exam cycle. Requirements occasionally change between years.
A frontal passport-style photo compressed to 20KB is recognisably you — faces compress well because skin tones are low-frequency data that JPG handles efficiently. The visual difference between a 20KB and a 200KB version of the same headshot is much smaller than you might expect. Exam portals are looking for identity verification, not print-quality resolution.
For best results: take the photo against a plain light background, avoid heavy patterned clothing, and ensure even lighting. A well-lit plain photo reaches 20KB with less compression applied, which means better quality at the same file size.
Drag the photo into the upload box or click to browse. The tool accepts JPG, PNG, and WEBP.
Select 20KB as your target. Your image is processed entirely in your browser — no server upload, no waiting in a queue.
The downloaded file size is shown before you save. If the portal is still rejecting it, check that the pixel dimensions also meet the exam's requirements (most need 100×120 px for SSC).
Portals check both file size and pixel dimensions. A photo can be under 20KB but at the wrong dimensions, or the right dimensions but over 20KB. Check both. SSC requires 100×120 pixels; IBPS requires 200×230 pixels. Our main image resizer can adjust dimensions before or after compression.
For a headshot used on an exam form, no. The face and features will be clearly visible. The loss is in fine background detail, which doesn't matter for identity verification purposes.
Yes, but repeated compression progressively degrades quality. If possible, start from the original uncompressed file or the highest-quality version you have. Each generation of JPG compression adds artifacts.
On this tool, yes. Your image is processed entirely in your browser using the HTML5 Canvas API. It is never transmitted to any server. We literally cannot access your photo.