If you've ever sat in front of the SSC one-time registration page at 11pm, staring at the words "file size should be between 10 KB and 20 KB," while the phone photo of your signature cheerfully weighs 3.4 MB, you already know why this article exists. The SSC portal is unforgiving about photos and signatures, and it won't tell you what's actually wrong — it just refuses the upload and lets you guess.
So let's remove the guessing. Below are the exact requirements the Staff Selection Commission uses across CGL, CHSL, GD Constable, MTS and Stenographer registrations, the mistakes that get people stuck, and a way to fix a photo in about two minutes without installing anything.
The exact SSC photo and signature specifications
Big change in 2026: SSC's new application module captures your photograph live through your webcam or the SSC mobile app, so for CGL/CHSL 2026 you no longer upload a photo file at all. You still upload a scanned signature. Per the SSC CGL 2026 notice (paras 9.4–9.6), the requirements are:
| Document | Dimensions | File size | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photograph | Captured live in the application — no upload (no cap, mask or spectacles) | — | |
| Signature | about 6.0 × 2.0 cm (472 × 157 px at 200 DPI) | 10 KB – 20 KB | JPEG |
Older SSC cycles (and many other portals that copied them) asked for a 200 × 230 px, 20–50 KB photo and a 140 × 60 px signature. If your recruitment's notice still asks for an uploaded photo, follow the notice — the tips below apply either way.
A few things worth knowing that the instruction page doesn't spell out clearly:
- The photo has to be recent and taken against a light, plain background — not a busy room, not a doorway.
- For the live photo, sit facing a plain, light wall with even light. Capturing a photo of an existing photograph leads to rejection.
- Your face should fill most of the frame. A tiny head in the middle of a big background technically passes the size check but can be flagged during document verification.
Always cross-check the notification PDF for your specific recruitment before you submit — SSC occasionally tweaks the numbers, and this guide is a reference, not the official rulebook.
Why the SSC portal keeps rejecting your photo
Almost every rejection comes down to one of four things, and it's usually the last one.
1. The file is too big
A modern phone photo is measured in megabytes. SSC wants kilobytes — a 20 KB signature is under one-hundred-and-seventieth of a typical 3.5 MB photo. Simply renaming or "compressing a bit" won't get you there; you need to actually reduce the resolution and re-encode the JPEG.
2. The dimensions are wrong
People resize the file size but forget the pixel dimensions. If your photo is 1080 × 1080 but under 50 KB, some portals still complain because it isn't the exact size the notice asks for. And if you force a 472 × 157 strip onto a square photo, your face gets squished. The fix is to crop to the right shape first, then resize.
3. Wrong format
SSC wants JPEG. iPhones save HEIC by default, and a lot of scanned signatures come out as PNG. The portal either rejects these outright or silently fails.
4. The file is now too small
This is the sneaky one. You compress your photo to beat the 50 KB ceiling, and it drops to 12 KB — below the 20 KB floor. SSC rejects it for being under the minimum. Most free compressors have no idea there's a lower limit, so they happily overshoot and you're stuck bouncing between "too big" and "too small."
How to fix it in two minutes
You can do all of this in the browser with ExamFitr's SSC preset — nothing gets uploaded to a server, so your photo and signature stay on your device. Here's the flow:
- Upload your photo. JPG, PNG, WEBP or an iPhone HEIC all work — HEIC is converted automatically.
- Choose the SSC preset. It switches to Signature (SSC takes the photo live) and sets 472 × 157 px and the 10–20 KB range for you, so you're not typing numbers.
- Crop to your face. The crop box is locked to the right shape, so nothing stretches. Nudge it so your head and a little shoulder fill the frame.
- Hit the exact size. The preset already targets 10–20 KB; or type 15 and press "Make it exactly this size." You land inside the range — above the floor, under the ceiling.
- Download when the badge turns green. For any portal that still wants a photo upload, switch to Photo mode and repeat.
That "make it exactly" step is the part that matters, because it respects the lower limit. Compress-only tools are exactly why so many people end up with a 12 KB photo that gets bounced.
Getting a clean signature
Signatures cause almost as much trouble as photos. Sign on plain white paper with a dark blue or black pen, then photograph it straight-on in good light. When you bring it into the tool, turn on auto-crop whitespace so the blank paper around your signature is trimmed and the signature is centred, and use whiten background to clean up the paper. A grey, off-centre signature photographed at an angle is the classic reason a signature upload looks wrong even when the size is fine.
A quick checklist before you hit submit
- Signature is JPEG, between 10 and 20 KB, about 6 × 2 cm.
- If your notice asks for an uploaded photo: exactly the pixels and KB it states.
- Face fills the frame; background is plain and light.
- Signature is dark, centred, on clean white.
- You've re-checked the numbers against your recruitment's official notification.
Do those and the portal stops fighting you. The whole thing is far more annoying than it should be — but once your files are the right shape and weight, the upload just goes through, and you can get back to actually preparing for the exam.