Compress an image to 20 KB
A 20 KB cap is the signature of government portals, exam registrations, and visa systems — usually for a passport-style photo or signature scan. It's an aggressive target that most tools miss or hit by silently wrecking the image.
This page opens the compressor in target-size mode set to 20 KB. It searches for the highest quality that fits, and — crucial for this size — tells you plainly when the target is unreachable at your image's dimensions instead of pretending.
Loading tool…
This is Compress Image preconfigured for this task — open the full tool for every option.
How it works
Select an image; it decodes locally.
Choose an output format and quality, or set a target file size.
Compare original and compressed versions with the wipe slider.
Download — the size you saw is exactly the size you get.
What the tool does
- Quality slider with live re-encode and exact byte counts
- Target-size search that reports honestly when the target is unreachable
- JPEG, WebP, and PNG output
- Wipe-style before/after comparison at matched zoom
- Metadata stripped by default via clean re-encode
How the result is verified
The compressed bytes are re-decoded to confirm the image parses and dimensions match, and the displayed byte size is measured from the actual output blob.
Frequently asked questions
The tool says 20 KB is unreachable — what do I do?
Reduce the pixel dimensions first; file size scales with area. A 1000px photo can't hit 20 KB gracefully, but the same photo at 400px usually can. Resize, then compress.
Why do these portals demand such tiny files?
Legacy infrastructure and cautious storage budgets. The cap is rarely negotiable, so the practical path is small dimensions plus target-size compression — both doable locally here.
Is my ID photo uploaded to compress it?
No — which matters for exactly this kind of document. Encoding runs in your browser; the photo never leaves your device.