Compress photo for UPPSC OTR

UPPSC photo and signature: the official OTR limits

The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission takes your photograph and signature in One Time Registration, on its OTR portal, and the OTR number is the registration you apply to its advertisements with. So these are the two files to get right before any UPPSC form. The figures above come from the UPPSC One Time Registration — Guidelines for Scanning Photograph with Signature (PDF), the instruction the Commission publishes on its own site.

Two ceilings, and no floor

Most exam notices give a band: a minimum and a maximum. UPPSC gives only a ceiling. There is no lower limit in the instruction, so a small, clean file is acceptable as long as the face and the signature stay sharp. To see what fits under those ceilings on a general image, the 50 KB and 30 KB pages measure it on real photographs.

The ceiling is worded two ways in the same document — “less than” in the table and “not more than” in the numbered steps — and the note under the table prints both. The difference is a single kilobyte at most, but it decides whether a file of exactly the limit passes. The tool takes the stricter reading: the photograph stays at or under 49,999 bytes and the signature at or under 29,999 bytes.

Centimetres at 200 DPI, turned into pixels

UPPSC states each image as a print size plus a scanner setting, not as pixels. Multiplying one by the other gives the pixel size a scan at that setting produces:

• Photograph — 5 cm × 6 cm at 200 DPI is about 394 × 472 pixels, a portrait a little taller than it is wide.
• Signature — 6 cm × 3 cm at 200 DPI is about 472 × 236 pixels, twice as wide as it is tall: a deeper box than most exams use, so sign at your normal size rather than squeezing into a thin strip.

Those pixel figures are arithmetic from the instruction, not numbers the instruction prints, so treat them as a target rather than a rule. The instruction also asks for true colour, which rules out a black-and-white scan of the signature.

How the instruction expects you to prepare the files

1. Paste your photograph on white paper at the stated size and sign in the signature space provided.
2. Scan the sheet at 200 DPI in true colour and save it.
3. Crop the photograph and the signature out as two separate images at their own dimensions. If you would rather set the crop yourself, crop each one here first.
4. Drop each image into the tool above; it brings each one under its ceiling and shows the exact size before you download.

Where UPPSC is strict about the signature

The instruction spends most of its words on the signature, and two of its rules end an application rather than a single upload. It must be your full signature, signed by you: initials are not sufficient, and capital letters are not permitted. And it is used on your Hall Ticket, so the signature you write on the answer script has to match it. Both sentences are quoted on the exam rejection reasons page with the other commissions’ rules.

Applying to central exams as well? The SSC signature has a floor of 10 KB, which a file made for UPPSC can fall under. Every exam MiniPx has checked against its own notice is listed on the government exams page.

The tool runs in your browser and the image is not uploaded to MiniPx.