Passport photo file size
The limits per form, and why a phone photo fails them.
A phone photo is three to eight megabytes. The US visa form wants a file no larger than 240 kilobytes — roughly one twentieth of that — and rejects anything over it before the form is even submitted. The tool encodes the download to the limit of the preset you chose and shows the final size in the checklist, so the upload check passes first time.
Make this photo → Opens the tool with the US visa DS-160 / DV lottery (digital) preset selected.- 100% freeNo account, no paid download, no watermark.
- Nothing is uploadedYour photo is processed on your device and never reaches a server.
- Official rules, citedEvery size and head-height figure links to the government page it comes from.
- Cheap to printDownload a 4×6 sheet and print it at any photo kiosk instead of paying counter prices for two prints.
The limits
US visa (DS-160), Diversity Visa entry and online passport renewal: JPEG, square, 600–1200 pixels, no larger than 240 KB, compression ratio no harder than 20:1. UK passport digital photo: at least 600 × 750 pixels, between 50 KB and 10 MB — note the minimum, which a tiny thumbnail can fail. Other countries' online portals set their own; check the application's photo page, and if it gives a limit in kilobytes, it is a hard check performed at upload.
Why 240 KB is not a problem for a proper photo
File size in a JPEG depends on how much fine detail there is to encode. A face on a plain background at 1200 × 1200 pixels is 100–200 KB at good quality. A phone original is large because it is 4000 pixels wide and full of background texture, not because the face needs the space. The tool crops to the square, replaces the background with a flat colour — which itself removes most of the detail the encoder was spending bytes on — and then lowers the JPEG quality in small steps only if the file is still over the limit. In the rare case that is not enough, it falls back to 600 pixels, which is still within the rules.
What not to do
Do not screenshot the photo to make it smaller: screenshots come out at screen resolution in the wrong proportions. Do not use a generic image compressor on the phone original — it will not crop, and the head-size rule will still fail. And do not convert to PNG for the US forms: they require JPEG, and PNG files of the same image are several times larger.
Frequently asked questions
The checklist shows 180 KB. Is that under 240 KB?
Yes. The checklist reports the actual encoded size after you download; anything at or under 240 KB passes the US check.
Can a file be too small?
For the UK, yes — under 50 KB is rejected. The tool's UK output is far above that. For the US forms there is no minimum size, only the 600-pixel minimum dimension.
Why does the DS-160 tool crop my photo again?
The State Department's upload page has its own crop step. Accept what it proposes; the file from here is already correctly framed, so the proposed crop is a no-op.