How to get a photo under a KB limit
- Open the photo. Tap Choose a photo or drop it on the page. JPG, PNG, WebP and GIF work everywhere; HEIC from an iPhone works in Safari, elsewhere convert it first.
- Pick the limit. Choose 100, 200 or 500 KB, type your own, or pick a portal preset — it sets the limit and any pixel rule the portal publishes.
- Shrink and check. Tap Shrink. The before/after table shows the new size in KB and bytes and the new dimensions, so you can confirm it meets the rule.
- Download. Save the JPG and upload it to the form. Your original photo is untouched.
What it does
- Targets 100, 200 or 500 KB, or any limit you type — presets for nine official portals with their published rules
- Binary search on JPEG quality first (never below 50 %), then on dimensions, so the photo stays as sharp as the limit allows
- Keeps the aspect ratio; optional maximum width and height in pixels
- Shows file size and pixel dimensions before and after, plus the quality used
- Removes EXIF metadata — camera, date and GPS coordinates — because the copy is a fresh encode
- JPG, PNG, WebP and GIF in; HEIC only where the browser decodes it (Safari). Runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded
Why do online forms limit photos to 100, 200 or 500 KB?
A phone photo is three to eight megabytes. A visa portal, a job application site or a school enrolment form stores millions of them and shows each on a 600-pixel card, so it caps uploads at a few hundred kilobytes and rejects anything larger — usually with a message that gives the number and nothing else. The number is the whole problem: a photo editor shows you pixels and quality sliders, not kilobytes, and you end up guessing.
How does this tool hit the number?
It treats the limit as the target and searches. The image is decoded in your browser and drawn on a canvas at its original size (or under the width and height caps you set). Then JPEG quality is searched between 95 % and 50 % for the highest value whose encoded size fits — a binary search, so about six encodes. If even 50 % is too large, the dimensions are reduced by roughly the square root of the overshoot, which is about what JPEG needs, and the search runs again. The result is the sharpest JPEG under your limit, and the before/after table shows exactly what changed.
What happens to the photo's metadata?
A canvas re-encode writes a fresh file. The EXIF block — camera model, lens, date, orientation, and the GPS coordinates most phones record — is simply not in it, and the tool strips any application segment the encoder adds. For JPEG originals it checks whether a GPS entry was present and says so. The browser applies the EXIF orientation while decoding, so a portrait shot stays upright without the tag. If you need to keep or inspect metadata instead, the photo metadata tool shows it.
What are the limits of the tool?
Output is always JPEG, because that is what the forms in the table ask for; a PNG with transparency gets a white background. It never enlarges or crops: if a form wants a square or an exact pixel size, crop first with the passport photo tool. HEIC decodes only in Safari; elsewhere convert with HEIC to JPG first. Very large photos (over about 60 MB, or more than 16 megapixels on some phones) can exhaust memory. And some issuers — IRCC's citizenship and passport photo rules are two — want the file exactly as the camera saved it; a resized copy may be refused there, so read the row's note before uploading.
Runs in your browser
The photo is read into this tab's memory and written back as a download. No upload, no account, nothing stored. Once the form is submitted, the Paperlock app is where the original and the confirmation can live: a private, searchable vault on your iPhone with expiry reminders for the visa you just applied for.