How to crop a photo for an exam or government form
- Open your photo. The SSC exam preset is selected; pick PAN, or choose Custom and type the form’s own rules.
- For a custom form, set the size in cm (or px), the DPI, and the KB window — for example at least 20 KB and under 50 KB.
- Drag the crop box over your face and shoulders. The box keeps the form’s shape.
- Press Crop Picture. The JPEG quality is settled automatically to land inside the KB window, and the spec check lists every rule with a tick or a cross.
- Download the file and upload it to the form.
Form photo specs
Every preset carries its source and the date it was checked. Notices change between recruitment cycles, so read the current one before you upload.
| Preset | Rules | Source · checked |
|---|---|---|
| SSC exam photo | JPEG, 20 KB to 50 KB; About 3.5 cm wide × 4.5 cm high; Recent colour photo, face clearly visible, no cap or glasses | Staff Selection Commission (Karnataka–Kerala Region), CHSLE 2022 notice · 2026-10-18 |
| PAN application photo | JPEG, 50 KB or smaller; 200 DPI; Commonly 3.5 cm high × 2.5 cm wide — published pages disagree on the size; Colour photo on a white background | Protean, “PAN card documents scanning / uploading method” (dimensions not confirmed) · 2026-10-18 Confirm on the official portal — not tied to an official page here. |
What this mode does that a plain cropper does not
Exam and government portals reject a photo that misses the rules by one byte or one pixel, and the rules come in mixed units: centimetres, DPI, pixels and kilobytes. Picking a preset here sets all of them together — the shape of the crop, the output pixels worked out from the centimetres and DPI, the DPI written into the file, JPEG as the format, and the KB window.
The KB window is met against the real encoder, not an estimate: the photo is encoded at several qualities (at most eight tries) and the best one inside the window is kept. The result panel then reads the saved file back and prints a spec check — pixels, print size, file size, format and colour, plus a background heuristic that looks at the edges of the photo. All of it runs in this browser tab; the photo is never uploaded.
Need the signature too? Crop signature trims to the ink and whitens the paper. For any other size, crop to size works in cm, mm or inches.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make my photo between 20 KB and 50 KB?
Pick the SSC preset, or type 20 in “At least” and 50 in “Keep under”. The best JPEG quality that lands inside the window is chosen by test-encoding, and the result shows the KB and quality used.
Is 1 KB 1,000 or 1,024 bytes?
Portals generally count 1,024 bytes, so that is the default. The toggle switches to 1,000, and the result always says which was used.
What if the photo is still too big at the lowest quality?
You see the size it reached at quality 40 and a button to reduce the pixels in 5 % steps until it fits. Pixels are never cut without asking, because some forms check them too.
And if the photo is too small?
Quality is raised first. If quality 100 is still below the minimum, you are told plainly — set a larger size. CropPicture never pads a file with junk bytes to pass a check.
Why does the PAN preset say to confirm on the portal?
Published pages disagree on the PAN photo’s dimensions. The preset uses the commonly cited 2.5 × 3.5 cm at 200 DPI, ≤ 50 KB — confirm it on the official portal before you submit.
Which exams are covered?
SSC and PAN so far. More are added one at a time, each from its current official notice — never from aggregator sites. For any other form, use Custom and type the rules.