UPSC Photo and Signature Resizer, Converter and Compressor

What the Union Public Service Commission is

The Union Public Service Commission conducts the Civil Services Examination and the other central competitive examinations that select officers for the All India Services and the central government. The photograph and signature uploaded with an application stay attached to the candidate's record through the examination, the interview and the verification stage, and the same identity document is reused across later applications and subsequent cadre clearances.

The UPSC specification is the simplest on this site because it involves no physical measurement at all. Both the photograph and the signature are square, given as 550 by 550 pixels or 1000 by 1000 pixels for the photograph and 350 by 350 or 550 by 550 pixels for the signature, all with a 300 KB ceiling and a 20 KB floor. Square framing means centring the face in a square canvas rather than cropping to the usual portrait aspect, which is the part people most often get wrong.

The UPSC notification itself is on upsc.gov.in. Check the upload section of that document before generating files, since these requirements are revised between recruitment drives and the values stored in this tool follow the recorded specification.

This page sets out the numbers UPSC actually asks for. It is not a general guide to cropping or to the tool interface, because those instructions do not change from one exam to the next and they are written up separately.

What the UPSC form asks you to upload

Two files go into this form. They are:

• A photograph at 550 x 550 px, no heavier than 300 KB and no lighter than 20 KB.
• A signature at 350 x 350 px, no heavier than 300 KB and no lighter than 20 KB.

The UPSC numbers, and why they matter

UPSC uses square image dimensions, which is the detail most likely to catch people out. The photograph and signature are framed on a square canvas rather than the portrait aspect ratio used by most exam boards, so the face has to be centred in a square with margin on both sides. Cropping to the familiar narrow portrait shape will leave the image the wrong proportions no matter how many pixels wide it is.

The UPSC photograph allowance runs up to 300 KB with a floor set at just 20 KB. Most boards pair a ceiling with a noticeably higher minimum, so on this record you can compress fairly hard before hitting the floor, and the number to watch is the ceiling.

If the UPSC application refuses your file

• If UPSC refuses a file, start with the weight on the result card against the 300 KB, then look at the picture. At this ceiling, an uncropped phone photo straight off the camera will not fit, so crop before you compress rather than after.
• For the UPSC signature, keep the crop tight around the ink. The 350 x 350 px frame is small, so every extra millimetre of empty paper is weight you do not have, and the 300 KB ceiling does not leave room for it.
• Repeating an identical submission is the most common wasted step here. Compare the values above against the live notification, and if the notification has moved, change one value at a time rather than re-running the whole form.

Official links from the original page

• upsconline.nic.in/user-manual
• www.upsconline.nic.in/faq.php

Images from the original page

Frequently Asked Questions

Cropping to a face, choosing a compression level, and the reasons a correctly sized photograph still gets refused do not vary by exam, so those are covered in one place rather than repeated here. Read the shared photo and signature guide.