Most guides say "under 240 KB". That is true for a visa form and wrong for a passport renewal, where the file must also stay above 54 KB. Upload yours and we apply the limit for your document — then export a file that actually lands inside it.
Check my file — freeRules checked against travel.state.gov and ceac.state.gov on 4 Nov 2026 · Photo never leaves your browser
The three limits
The pixel range and the file size move together. Fixing one and breaking the other is the most common way an upload fails twice.
| Document | Pixels | Format | File size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Passport renewal (online) | 600–2400 px square | JPEG | 54 KB – 10 MB |
| DS-160 visa (CEAC) | 600–1200 px square | JPEG | ≤ 240 KB |
| DV lottery entry | exactly 600 × 600 px | JPEG | ≤ 240 KB |
| Paper forms (I-485 and similar) | 2 × 2 in print, 300 dpi | No digital limit — you post prints |
The DV entry is the strictest of the three: exactly 600 × 600, not "at least". A 1200 px photo that is perfect for a passport renewal will be rejected by the lottery form.
Too large
A note on colour: both upload systems expect an sRGB JPEG. iPhones default to a wider colour profile, and several services report that profile alone being enough to fail the check. Exporting as plain sRGB avoids the question.
Too small
A passport renewal upload has a floor as well as a ceiling. Compress a clean photo down to 30 KB and it fails for being too small — which reads like nonsense when every guide told you to shrink the file.
The floor exists because the agency needs enough data to print at 300 dpi. A photo of a plain white wall compresses to almost nothing, so a correctly framed but heavily compressed file can land under the limit while looking fine on screen.
If your file falls short, the fix is to re-export at higher JPEG quality rather than to upscale. Upscaling adds pixels and no detail, and the printed result looks worse than the number suggests.
What we do
The correct 2 × 2 framing is applied first, so compression never interferes with framing.
240 KB for a visa or lottery entry, up to 10 MB for a passport renewal — the limit follows the document you picked.
Below 54 KB we re-export at higher quality instead of shipping a file the agency will bounce.
You see the pixel dimensions and the file size before paying, not after the upload fails.
FAQ
For a passport renewal uploaded through the State Department site, the file must be a JPEG between 54 KB and 10 MB. Both ends matter: a file under 54 KB is rejected as too small, and a phone photo is often over 3 MB, which is fine here but not for a visa form.
The CEAC system used by the DS-160 caps the photo at 240 KB, and it accepts JPEG only between 600 and 1200 pixels square. A modern phone photo is routinely 2 to 4 MB, so it fails on size before anyone looks at the framing.
Compressing after the fact usually also resizes the image, which can push it below the 600 pixel minimum or soften the face. The safe order is: crop to the correct square first, then compress to the size limit, then verify the pixel dimensions did not change.
No. Both the DS-160 and the passport upload require JPEG. An iPhone set to High Efficiency saves HEIC by default, so the file has to be converted before upload even when the photo itself is perfect.
No. It reproduces the published measurements and produces a file inside the published limits. The agency decides, and an officer also judges things a file cannot show — expression, headwear, photo age.
Ready when you are
Pick the document, upload the photo, and see the pixel size and file size before you pay anything.
