Compress an image to 20 KB
Get a photo or signature under 20 KB for an exam or government form. Finds the best quality that fits, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
Last updated
20 KB is the limit application portals set for signatures and small photos: exam boards, passport and visa forms, job applications. It is tiny. A phone photo is two or three hundred times that. Getting under it means shrinking the picture as well as compressing it, and this page does both, trying settings until the file is as good as it can be while still fitting.
What 20 KB is enough for
A signature scanned or photographed on white paper, cropped close. Signatures are mostly flat colour, so they compress extremely well and stay sharp.
A passport-style head and shoulders photo at around 200 to 350 pixels wide. That is the size most forms display it at anyway.
It is not enough for a full-resolution photograph. If the form also states pixel dimensions, resize to those first with Resize Image, then come back here.
Getting a signature under 20 KB cleanly
Sign in dark ink on plain white paper, photograph it in good light, and crop to the signature with a little margin. The less background there is, the more of the 20 KB goes on the signature itself. A grey, shadowed background wastes bytes on noise.
If the form says JPG only
Most portals accept JPG and nothing else, which is what this produces. If yours insists on a minimum size as well, such as 10 to 20 KB, check the result: an image can compress so well that it falls below a minimum, and a slightly larger pixel size fixes that.
Questions
How do I reduce a photo to 20 KB?
Add it to this page and press the button. It lowers the JPG quality step by step and, when that is not enough, the pixel size, and keeps the best version that is under 20 KB.
Will my photo still be clear at 20 KB?
A face at passport-photo size, yes. A whole scene, noticeably less so. The limit is set for small displayed images, and at that size a 20 KB JPG looks fine.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The compression runs in your browser. That matters for identity documents in particular: the photo never passes through anyone else's server.