Compress Photo for CTET 2026 Application — Free, Fast & Private
The CTET official photo and signature spec
| Format | JPG / JPEG |
|---|---|
| File size | 10–100 KB |
| Pixels | not stated |
| Shape | no ratio stated |
| Print size | 3.5 cm × 4.5 cm (width × height) |
| DPI | not stated |
| Other rules |
|
The official wording
Size of scanned photograph should be between 10 to 100 KB
Source: CTET September 2026 — Information Bulletin (CBSE), p. 3 (May 2026) — checked 5 October 2026
Only need the photo under 100 KB, with no pixel rules? Compress image to 100 KB aims at that size alone; the tool on this page does not check the pixel box or the shape either, so compare your file with the table before you upload it.
| Format | JPG / JPEG |
|---|---|
| File size | 3–30 KB |
| Pixels | not stated |
| Shape | no ratio stated |
| Print size | 3.5 cm × 1.5 cm (width × height) |
| DPI | not stated |
| Other rules |
|
The official wording
Size of scanned signature should be between 3 KB to 30 KB.
Source: CTET September 2026 — Information Bulletin (CBSE), p. 3 (May 2026) — checked 5 October 2026
Only need the signature under 30 KB, with no pixel rules? Compress image to 30 KB aims at that size alone; the tool on this page does not check the pixel box or the shape either, so compare your file with the table before you upload it.
CBSE prints the CTET upload rules in the information bulletin for each cycle (CTET September 2026 — Information Bulletin (CBSE), p. 3), under STEP 4: Upload latest Scanned Photograph and Signature. Both uploads are mandatory:
- Photograph — JPG/JPEG, 10–100 KB, image dimension 3.5 cm wide × 4.5 cm high.
- Signature — JPG/JPEG, 3–30 KB, image dimension 3.5 cm long × 1.5 cm high.
- The photograph you submit is matched against you at the examination centre — so it has to be a recent likeness, not an old file that happens to be the right size.
CBSE gives centimetres. Your file is in pixels.
This is the part that confuses people, and it is worth being precise about: the bulletin specifies the photograph in centimetres, not pixels. A JPEG has no inherent physical size — centimetres only become pixels once you fix a resolution. So you choose the DPI, and the choice decides your pixel count:
- At 300 DPI: 3.5 × 4.5 cm becomes roughly 413 × 531 px — print quality, and a larger file.
- At 200 DPI: roughly 276 × 354 px — comfortably sharp on screen and much easier to fit under 100 KB.
- At 96 DPI: roughly 132 × 170 px — too small; the face goes soft when the examiner compares it to you.
Aim somewhere between 200 and 300 DPI. What actually matters to the portal is the 3.5 : 4.5 aspect ratio and the file size band; a photo at that ratio and a sane pixel count passes. Note that no pixel dimension appears anywhere in the bulletin — if a site tells you CTET requires a particular pixel size, that number is not from CBSE.
The signature band is the tight one
A photograph has 90 KB of headroom between floor and ceiling. The signature has 27. And a flatbed scan of a signature on white paper, saved straight out of the scanner software, routinely lands several times over the ceiling.
The reason is that scanners capture paper texture, and JPEG spends real bytes encoding that speckle. Crop tightly to the signature itself before compressing: whitespace is not free, and cropping is the single most effective move here. Then compress at JPEG with a small max width — 640px, the smallest width setting, is plenty for a 3.5 cm strip — and check the result against the 3 KB floor as well as the 30 KB ceiling.
Why your CTET upload was rejected
File too large. The usual cause, and the easiest to fix — drop the max width and re-compress.
File too small. Less obvious and just as fatal. Below 10 KB for a photo, or 3 KB for a signature, the file is outside the band the bulletin prints. Advice to “compress as much as possible” is actively wrong for CTET; both limits bind.
Wrong shape. A square crop, or a landscape phone photo, is not 3.5 : 4.5 however small the file. Crop to portrait proportions first.
Wrong format. PNG and HEIC are not JPG. An iPhone photo is HEIC by default — converting it is a required step, not an optional one.
MiniPx shows the exact output size before you download, so both bounds can be checked rather than guessed. Nothing leaves your device: your photograph and signature are processed entirely inside your browser.
The conversion above is standard print arithmetic — why DPI does nothing on screen but decides everything in print covers it in full.