The portal rejected your photo, and the message names a number: 600 by 600 pixels, or 35 by 45 millimetres, or a file no bigger than 50KB. A phone photo fails all three at once — it is thousands of pixels wide, the wrong shape, and several megabytes. Fixing it means three numbers in the right order: crop to the ratio, resize to the pixels, compress under the cap. The Image Resizer handles the middle step.
The order matters more than any single step. Resizing first and cropping second wastes work, because the crop throws away pixels you just sized. Compressing first and resizing second wastes quality, because compression discards detail the resize would have removed anyway. Crop to the ratio, resize to the exact pixels, compress to the cap — and check the portal spec first, because the numbers change between portals.
Read the spec first: pixels, millimetres and kilobytes
Every portal states its photo spec in three units. The US visa photo is 600 by 600 pixels, a square 2 by 2 inches at 300 DPI. A 35 by 45 millimetre photo at 300 DPI is 413 by 531 pixels — 35 millimetres is 1.38 inches, times 300 is 413. Common caps: 20KB for a signature, 50KB for a passport photo, 100KB or 200KB for general uploads. Your portal's own page is the authority: specs change.
The three steps
1. Crop to the ratio. A ratio is the shape of the photo, fixed before any resizing happens. A 600 by 600 photo is square (1:1); a 413 by 531 photo is portrait (7:9). Your phone photo is almost certainly landscape, 4:3, so it matches neither shape — and resizing never changes a photo's shape, it only scales it. Use the Image Cropper with exact X, Y, Width and Height values — for a square from a 4,032 by 3,024 photo, Width and Height 3,024 with X offset 504 centres it.
2. Resize to the exact pixels. In the Image Resizer, type the target into Width with Keep aspect ratio ticked: 600 on a square photo gives Height 600; 413 on a 7:9 portrait gives 531. Never untick the lock and type both numbers into a mismatched photo — that stretches the face, and a stretched passport photo is a rejected passport photo. Note: the resizer downloads a PNG, which stays large — step 3 fixes the file size.
3. Compress under the KB cap. In the Image Compressor, start at 80% quality and step down in 5% increments until the readout drops under your cap, aiming 5 to 10% under it. If the resized PNG refuses to shrink, convert it to JPEG first — JPEG is built for photographs, PNG is built for exactness.
Read the full guide
Passport Photo Size: Pixels, Ratios and File Size Explained — the full guide has the worked example, every pixel calculation shown, and the mistakes that get photos rejected. All three tools run entirely in your browser: your photo is never uploaded, stored or logged.
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