Photo size for online application forms in Pakistan

Every Pakistani online application form asks for a photograph, and almost every one sets a different limit. The limits below come from the organisations’ own documents, not from other websites, and each one links to the form page on this site that quotes the wording. Use this page to find the number for your form, then the page for that form to make the file.

Photo size for each online form

Two things stand out in the table. First, the job commissions set the tightest limits: PPSC and Pak Navy want a picture under 25 KB and 20 KB, which is less than one hundredth of what a phone camera produces. Second, none of the Pakistani forms states a size in pixels. They say “passport size” and give a KB limit, so the shape is the standard 35 × 45 mm photograph and the only number to get right is the file size.

What “passport size” means for an upload

A passport size photograph is 35 mm wide and 45 mm high, head and shoulders, facing the camera, on a plain background. For a file that shape is a width-to-height ratio of 7 to 9. At 300 dpi it is 413 × 531 pixels, which is plenty for any of the forms above and small enough to fit under 25 KB as a JPG. A phone photo cropped to that shape, with the head taking up a little over half the height, is what every commission expects to see.

The Pak Army form is the exception on shape: its upload box is square, so the picture is cropped to a square rather than 7 to 9. The passport sheet and the resizer on the Pak Army page both do that for you.

Getting a photo under 20, 25 or 30 KB without ruining it

File size depends on two things: how many pixels the picture has and how hard the JPG is compressed. A phone photo of 4000 × 3000 pixels cannot be squeezed to 25 KB without turning into blocks. The same picture cropped to the face and shoulders and resized to about 413 × 531 pixels reaches 25 KB at a normal JPG quality and still looks sharp. Resize first, compress second; the guide on compressing a photo to 20 KB clearly goes through this in detail.

1. Crop to head and shoulders in the 35 × 45 mm shape. Space above the head, the shoulders at the bottom, nothing else in the frame.
2. Resize to roughly 413 × 531 pixels. Larger pictures only add kilobytes the form will not use.
3. Save as JPG. PNG files of a photograph are several times larger at the same size.
4. Check the size of the saved file against the form’s limit before uploading. A file that is “about” 25 KB is refused if it is 25.4 KB.

The form pages on this site do all four steps in the browser: choose the form, choose the photo, drag it into the frame and download a file that is under that form’s limit. The photo never leaves your computer or phone.

Forms that also ask for a CNIC image

PPSC and ASF ask for the front of the CNIC as a second image, under the same 25 KB or 30 KB limit as the photograph. The whole card has to stay readable, so it is cropped to the card’s edges rather than to a face, and resized to about 674 × 425 pixels, which keeps the name and number legible at 25 KB. The passport and visa portals take the CNIC and other documents at larger limits. The guide on photographing a CNIC for upload covers the lighting and the crop.

Forms outside Pakistan

Foreign portals tend to state pixels where Pakistani ones state KB. Bangladesh’s Teletalk system for BPSC asks for exactly 300 × 300 pixels under 100 KB and a 300 × 80 pixel signature; the US DS-160 visa form wants a square JPEG of 600 × 600 to 1200 × 1200 pixels under 240 kB; a UK online passport application wants at least 600 × 750 pixels and between 50 KB and 10 MB. Each has its own page on this site with the official wording and a tool that makes the exact size.

When the numbers change

Commissions revise their forms, and the limit in a new advertisement can differ from the one in last year’s. Each form page on this site quotes the document it was taken from with the date it was checked. If the advertisement you are applying under states a different figure, follow the advertisement, and use the compress-to-N-KB pages here for whatever number it gives.