Why did the pixels change?

Because 20 KB is very little. A phone photo at its own size is still hundreds of KB at quality 40, so after the quality search the desk shrinks the pixels step by step until the file fits, then tries once to give back any it did not need. A full-size phone photo usually ends up several hundred pixels across (the measured example on this page shows one), and the row prints the size it chose next to the original.

Will text and signatures stay readable?

The quality never drops below 40 here; the pixels come down instead. For a signature, crop it close to the ink first so the 20 KB is spent on the signature rather than on blank paper.

Which forms ask for 20 KB?

Mostly signatures: bank recruitment signatures are 10–20 KB, and the SSC signature is commonly given as 10–20 KB. The table on this page lists them with their sources and dates. Always check the current notice for your form.

It says over target. What now?

The closest result is kept on the row. Crop the photo to just what the form needs and run it again, or lower the quality floor in the Recipe panel. Nothing is dropped silently.

Is the photo uploaded to make it 20 KB?

No. Every encode in the search runs in this browser tab. The site has no upload address.

Compress Photo to 20 KB — For Forms and Signatures

A measured example

Synthetic 4032 × 3024 test photo (noise and shapes, harder to compress than most photos), run by this build in Chromium 141 on 2026-10-18
Recipe	Target 20 KB, Standard (76), written as JPEG
Before	4.35 MB · 4032 × 3024 · JPEG
After	19.7 KB · 790 × 593 · JPEG q44
Change	−99.6%

What this does

Compress photo to 20 KB without guessing: the desk is already set to a 20 KB target, written as JPEG. Twenty kilobytes almost always means fewer pixels as well as a lower quality, so expect a phone photo to come back several hundred pixels across, with the exact size printed. The honest limit: a busy, detailed photo may not fit at a readable quality, and then it is marked rather than mangled.

Forms that use 20 KB

Form	Size	Pixels	Source
Bank recruitment signature	10–20 KB	140 × 60 px preferred	India Post Payments Bank recruitment, how to applychecked 2026-10-18
SSC signature	10–20 KB	about 4.0 × 2.0 cm	Third-party summary of the SSC noticechecked 2026-10-18Secondary source: confirm on the official portal

When to use this, and when not

Use it for a signature or a small photo where the form's maximum is 20 KB.
If the form gives a range such as 20–50 KB, use compress photo to 50 KB, which checks both ends.
For any other number, reduce photo size in KB takes whatever you type.

Honest limits

This page sets the size in KB. If the form also fixes the pixel size, check that on the form; the row tells you the pixel size you got.
Your browser's own JPEG encoder is used, so results differ by a few KB between browsers. The size on the row is the size of your file.
Photos smaller than 20 KB already are re-encoded only if that makes them smaller; otherwise the original is kept and the row says so.

Privacy on this page

Capture information (the date, the camera and any location) is removed on this page. Every probe of the size search runs in this tab. See also why some files are kept as they were.

Step by step

Choose the photo. Press Choose photos and pick the photo or the scanned signature.
Check the target. Size per file is set to Target 20 KB. Change it if your form says otherwise.
Compress. Press Compress and read the figures under the photo: the size in KB, the pixels and the quality that won.
Download. Press Download. The file name keeps the original name, with .jpg if the format changed.

Questions

Why did the pixels change?: Because 20 KB is very little. A phone photo at its own size is still hundreds of KB at quality 40, so after the quality search the desk shrinks the pixels step by step until the file fits, then tries once to give back any it did not need. A full-size phone photo usually ends up several hundred pixels across (the measured example on this page shows one), and the row prints the size it chose next to the original.
Will text and signatures stay readable?: The quality never drops below 40 here; the pixels come down instead. For a signature, crop it close to the ink first so the 20 KB is spent on the signature rather than on blank paper.
Which forms ask for 20 KB?: Mostly signatures: bank recruitment signatures are 10–20 KB, and the SSC signature is commonly given as 10–20 KB. The table on this page lists them with their sources and dates. Always check the current notice for your form.
It says over target. What now?: The closest result is kept on the row. Crop the photo to just what the form needs and run it again, or lower the quality floor in the Recipe panel. Nothing is dropped silently.
Is the photo uploaded to make it 20 KB?: No. Every encode in the search runs in this browser tab. The site has no upload address.