6 signs your photo will be rejected (check before you submit)

How to know if your photo will be rejected — pre-submit checklist before you finalise the form.

Run through these six checks before you submit. Each one is something you can verify yourself in under a minute, without any special tools.

1. You can see a shadow when you tilt the screen

Tilt your phone or laptop screen slightly while looking at the photo. If a shadow becomes visible on the background or across your face that you didn't notice at first glance, an automated check will likely catch it too.

2. Your face takes up less than half the frame height

Passport and most exam specs expect the face — chin to crown — to fill a large majority of the photo's height. If there's a lot of empty space above your head and below your chin, the face is too small. See Indian passport photo size — 35×45 mm (2026 rules) for the exact proportion.

3. The background has visible texture, gradient, or pattern

Zoom into the corners of the photo. A faint gradient from uneven lighting, a visible wall texture, or a soft-edged shadow all count as a non-uniform background, even if it looks "basically white" at normal size.

4. The file size shows in MB, not KB

Almost every Indian government and exam portal specifies a KB range, not MB. If your file properties show megabytes, it hasn't been resized yet and will be rejected on upload — see Photo size too large — how to get it under 20 KB or 50 KB.

5. The preview thumbnail already looks blurry

If the small thumbnail preview looks soft or blocky before you've even uploaded it, the full-size version will look worse after the portal's own compression. This usually means the photo was over-compressed or resized incorrectly already.

6. The photo is more than six months old

Most specifications expect a recent photo. If you're unsure when a photo was taken, or you know it's from an old application, treat it as expired and take a new one rather than risk a mismatch on manual review.

Quick reference table

#	Warning sign	What it means
1	Shadow visible on tilt	Uneven lighting
2	Face fills <50% of height	Reframe closer
3	Background texture/gradient	Retake against plain surface
4	File size in MB	Needs resizing to KB range
5	Blurry thumbnail	Over-compressed or upscaled
6	Photo older than 6 months	Retake with current appearance

Fix yours

This applies across documents and exams — pick yours and we will set the exact size automatically.

Choose your document or exam

Document photo rules look similar across portals but differ in pixels, KB, and background. Always read the current notification instead of copying last year's file. When a form rejects an upload, note the exact error text — "invalid dimensions" and "file too large" need different fixes. PhotoFix presets encode the published spec so you do not have to memorize each exam.

Before final submit, compare your export against the checklist: correct JPG, dimensions within range, KB inside the window, plain background, and face proportion where applicable. Keeping the original photo lets you re-export if a portal updates limits mid-cycle.