| Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
| Target size | 5 – 20 KB |
| Pixel size | 160 × 205 |
| Format | JPG |
| Where it runs | Your browser — nothing is uploaded |
Most Maharashtra government portals cap the photograph at 20 KB. A phone camera produces a file of 3,000 to 8,000 KB, so the picture has to come down by a factor of a few hundred — and it has to stay recognisable while it does.
This is the step almost everyone gets wrong. A 4000 × 3000 photograph squeezed to 20 KB without being resized turns to mush: the quality has to fall through the floor because there are twelve million pixels to pay for. Cut the picture to 160 × 205 first and there are only thirty-three thousand pixels left, so 20 KB is generous and the face stays sharp.
This page does both, in that order, with the Aaple Sarkar preset already loaded.
The portal states a height of 200 to 212 pixels. A file built at exactly 212 is sometimes refused, because encoding rounds the final height by a pixel and at the boundary that puts it outside the allowed range. 205 sits clear of both ends and is accepted every time. If a form you are filling states a different range, open More options and set the height yourself.
Twenty kilobytes is the ceiling, not the target. Aaple Sarkar also enforces a minimum of 5 KB, and an ordinary compressor that only knows about ceilings will happily hand you a 3 KB file that the portal then rejects — while the error message talks about size in a way that sounds like the file is too large.
This page holds both ends. If a picture cannot reach 5 KB even at full quality, it says so rather than shipping a file that will be refused.
At this size every extra detail costs you. A plain wall behind the subject, even daylight and no flash will do more for the result than any setting on this page. Grain from a dim photograph is the single most expensive thing in the file — it compresses badly and eats the budget that should have gone on the face.
Keep the original. Compression discards detail permanently, so work from the full-size picture each time rather than compressing an already-compressed copy.
Check the file name before you change the size again. Several portals refuse a name containing a space, a dot or a special character and report it as a size error, which sends people back to compressing a file that was already correct. A file arriving from a phone is usually called something like WhatsApp Image 2026-09-07 at 9.21.45 PM.jpg. Rename it to photo.jpg.
160 pixels wide and 200 to 212 pixels high, between 5 KB and 20 KB, in JPEG. Building it at 205 pixels high is safest, because a file made at exactly 212 is sometimes refused.
Because there is a minimum as well. Aaple Sarkar refuses anything under 5 KB. Ordinary compression tools only respect the ceiling, so they push the file too far down.
Not if the picture is resized to 160 x 205 first. At that size 20 KB is comfortable. Blurring happens when a full-resolution photo is compressed without being resized.
No. The picture is read and processed inside your browser and never leaves your device.
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