CAT Photo and Signature Resizer, Converter and Compressor

What CAT is

CAT is the Common Admission Test, the entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Management's flagship postgraduate management programmes and one of the most widely used management admissions tests in the country. It is a computer based test of two hours with three sections, Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Ability, and it is held once a year, normally in the last week of November or the first week of December. The examination is owned by the Indian Institutes of Management, which act as convener in rotation, and every registration is filed on the single official site iimcat.ac.in. Because the form itself is short and almost entirely automated, the photograph and signature are the only sections most applicants get wrong.

The registration guide describes the photograph as a box rather than a fixed size: the portrait must fit inside 1200 by 1200 pixels, at a resolution of at least 150 pixels per inch, taken against a white background and not more than six months old, saved as JPEG and weighing no more than 80 KB. The signature is specified as a physical frame, 80 millimetres wide by 35 millimetres high, also JPEG and also capped at 80 KB, with no minimum stated for either file. The rows stored in this tool allow a much larger 500 KB ceiling, so the ceiling in the notification, not the roomier preset on this page, should be your real target when you export the file.

The official CAT site is iimcat.ac.in. Take the photograph and signature numbers from the notice published there rather than from a third-party summary, since that document is the one the portal was built against.

This page sets out the numbers CAT 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 CAT form asks you to upload

Two images are required, and a failure in either one holds up the application. They are:

• A photograph at 1200 x 1200 px, no heavier than 500 KB and no lighter than 50 KB.
• A signature at 80 x 35 mm, no heavier than 500 KB and no lighter than 50 KB.

Stored preset versus the registration guide. This tool's preset record allows up to 500 KB for both images, but the CAT registration guide caps the photograph and the signature at 80 KB each and sets no minimum. Keep both files at or under 80 KB; the 50 KB floor shown above is this tool's own, not an IIM requirement.

The CAT numbers, and why they matter

CAT uses square image dimensions, which is the detail most likely to catch people out. The photograph is 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.

CAT sets a floor as well as a ceiling. The photograph has to land between 50 KB and 500 KB, and the signature between 50 KB and 500 KB. A file far below the minimum can fail the portal check even though it is technically under the limit, which is why the tool exposes a minimum field next to the maximum.

If the CAT application refuses your file

• If CAT refuses a file, start with the weight on the result card against the 500 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.
• Check the signature separately from the photograph. A 80 x 35 mm box with a wide margin around the writing will breach the 500 KB ceiling on its own, which is a different fix from anything that applies to the portrait.
• When two identical files are both refused, the file is usually not the variable. Re-check the notification against the table above, since a corrigendum between your two attempts is the usual explanation.

Video tutorial from the original page

Frequently Asked Questions

The mechanics of the crop step, the face mask overlay, and the compression trade-off are identical across all of these tools, so they have their own guide instead of a section on every page.