Compress image to 1 MB:
for online forms

Megabytes and kilobytes, briefly

Treeet counts 1 KB as 1,000 bytes and 1 MB as 1,000 KB, so Under 1 MB means at most 1,000,000 bytes. Some operating systems and portals count 1 MB as 1,048,576 bytes. Our file fits under both readings, which is why it may look like 977 KB in one place and 1.0 MB in another.

If your file manager shows a size like 0.98 MB, that is still under the limit.

Forms that cap uploads at 1 MB

A few examples are below. Check the instructions next to your own upload box too: many forms also require a shape or pixel size that a KB or MB target alone does not set.

• India e-Visa: the photo must be a square JPEG between 10 KB and 1 MB. Our India visa photo size page makes the square crop as well.
• BPSC (Balochistan): the online application asks for a passport-size photo with a white background under 1 MB; see our BPSC photo size page.
• Job and university portals that set one megabyte for every attachment, photo or document alike.

What changes in the picture

The tool saves a JPEG at 92% quality first. Many pictures already fit there, in which case the only change is the format. If not, it searches downwards for the highest quality under 1 MB, and if the quality would have to drop below 40%, it scales the picture down slightly and tries again.

Because quality comes before pixels, the result usually keeps the photo’s full width and height unless the original is very large or very detailed.

When 2 MB is the better pick

Some portals allow 2 MB. If yours does, choose Under 2 MB in the Target size box. The extra megabyte matters most for detailed scenes and photos of dense documents; for a portrait the two results are hard to tell apart.

Going the other way, if the form asks for a photo that will be shown as a small thumbnail, a lower target such as 500 KB costs nothing visible and uploads faster on a slow connection.

Before you upload

1. Open the downloaded JPG and look at it full screen. Faces and text should look as they did in the original.
2. Check the size in your file manager or in the result list here.
3. If the form also needs a square or a set size in pixels, use Passport size photo maker or Resize image first, then compress if the result is still too big.