How to get a photo under 20 KB for an exam or ID form

Crop the photo to the face, resize it to the pixel size the form asks for (or about 300 × 400 if it names none), then open it in Compress image and tap 20 KB. Doing it in that order keeps the face sharp; squeezing a full phone photo straight to 20 KB makes it soft and blocky.

Steps

1. Open Crop image, pick the ratio your form shows (a portrait form photo is often 3:4 or 4:5), frame head and shoulders and download.
2. Open Resize image, choose Pixels under Resize to and type the form's width and height. Leave When the shape differs on Crop to fill so the photo is not stretched. Download.
3. Open Compress image and drop in the resized photo.
4. Tap 20 KB under Target size. Set Output format to JPG unless the form asks for something else.
5. Drag the divider on the preview and check the eyes and mouth. Then press Download and upload the file.

Why 20 KB needs the extra steps

A photo from a phone camera is commonly between 2 and 5 MB. Getting it to 20 KB means making the file one or two hundred times smaller, and no quality setting can do that while keeping millions of pixels.

The compressor knows this. When the lowest quality still overshoots, it reduces the longest side of the picture to 2048, 1280, 800 and finally 480 pixels, searching for a fitting quality at each step. It gets there, but you do not control the final pixel size, and many forms check pixel size as well as file size. Resizing first puts you in charge of the pixels and leaves the compressor only one job: picking the quality.

What fits in 20 KB

We saved two test photos as JPG: a smooth lake scene and a detailed forest. At 300 × 400 pixels, both stayed under 20 KB at 50% quality (10 KB and 16 KB). At 400 × 500, the smooth one fitted at 50% (15 KB) but not at 70% (21 KB), while the detailed one was 25 KB even at 50%.

A typical form photo, a face against a plain wall, behaves like the smooth photo. That means 300 × 400 is comfortable and 400 × 500 is usually reachable at a lower quality.

Signatures are easier

A signature is dark ink on a light page, and that compresses very well. Crop close around the ink so the scan holds as little empty paper as possible, then compress with JPG output. A scan saved as PNG keeps every pixel exactly and can stay large, so change the output format rather than lowering anything else.

If the result is still too big or looks blurry

• The result line says it is the smallest it could reach. The output is probably PNG. Switch Output format to JPG, or resize to fewer pixels.
• The face is blocky. The pixel size is too big for 20 KB. Resize smaller, for example from 400 × 500 to 300 × 400.
• The form says the file is too large, but the tool says 20 KB. Some sites count 1,000 bytes as a kilobyte; the tool counts 1,024. Target 19 KB instead.
• The form says the photo is too small. It checks pixels too. Resize to its minimum size, then compress again.

Questions

Is the photo uploaded anywhere while I do this?

No. Cropping, resizing and compressing all run in your browser, and your photo stays on your device.

Can I compress several form photos to 20 KB at once?

Yes. Drop several files into Compress image; they all use the same target, and Download all saves them as one zip.

Does 20 KB always mean a small picture?

For a photo, yes. There is not enough room for a large, detailed picture in 20 KB. A scanned signature or a plain document can stay larger.

Will this work for 50 KB too?

Yes, with more room to spare. See how to compress a photo to 50 KB.