Resize a PAN card photo and signature
Pick whether you are preparing the photograph or the signature, add the file, and it comes back at the exact pixel size and under 50 KB. The numbers below come from Protean's own published guidance, linked at the foot of the page.
PAN photo and signature
What Protean actually publishes
Protean eGov Technologies, which operates the PAN service formerly branded NSDL, states the requirements in centimetres and dots per inch rather than in pixels:
- Photograph — JPEG, 200 DPI, 3.5 cm x 2.5 cm, maximum 50 KB.
- Signature — JPEG, 200 DPI, 2 cm x 4.5 cm, maximum 50 KB.
- Supporting proof documents — PDF, maximum 300 KB per page. This tool does not handle PDFs.
Where the pixel numbers come from
At 200 dots per inch, one centimetre is 78.74 pixels. The photograph at 2.5 cm wide by 3.5 cm tall therefore works out to 197 by 276 pixels, and the signature at 4.5 cm wide by 2 cm tall to 354 by 157 pixels. Those are the values the buttons above use.
We derive them rather than copy them, because the pixel figures circulating on other sites disagree with each other. If your form displays different numbers, trust the form — it is the thing doing the checking — and use the general resizer instead.
Dimensions and file size are two separate checks
A PAN upload can be rejected for being the wrong pixel size even when it is comfortably under 50 KB, and rejected for being over 50 KB even when the dimensions are exact. They are validated independently.
That is why this page does both in one pass: the image is drawn to the exact pixel size first, and only then is the JPEG quality searched downward until the file fits under 50 KB. At these small dimensions 50 KB is a generous budget, so the result normally keeps good quality.
Scanning the signature
Protean's guidance on the signature itself is short and worth following literally: never sign on a patterned or coloured background, and use a plain white piece of paper and a black ink pen.
Scan or photograph it straight on, crop tightly to the ink before using this tool, and avoid shadows. A signature cropped to the ink survives the resize to 354 by 157 far better than one floating in a large white field, because the ink keeps more of the pixels.
UTIITSL is a different portal, and we could not verify its numbers
PAN applications can also be made through UTIITSL, and its upload limits are not the same as Protean's. We looked for an official UTIITSL page stating photo and signature sizes and did not find one — its public PAN pages link to payment guidance and a document checklist, not to upload specifications.
Third-party sites quote conflicting figures for UTIITSL, so we are not repeating any of them here. Read the limit off the UTIITSL form in front of you and use the general resizer with those numbers.
Questions people ask
Is this the NSDL portal or the Protean one?
The same one. NSDL e-Governance was renamed Protean eGov Technologies; the PAN service and its published requirements carried over, which is why searches for both names lead to the same forms.
My photo is already under 50 KB. Do I still need to resize it?
Yes, if its pixel dimensions are wrong. File size and dimensions are checked separately, and a correctly sized 12 KB photo passes while an oversized 12 KB photo does not.
Can I upload a PNG?
Protean specifies JPEG for both the photograph and the signature, so this page always outputs JPEG regardless of what you put in.
What about the proof documents?
Those are PDFs, capped at 300 KB per page, and this tool only handles images. A scanned page saved as a JPG can be compressed here; an actual PDF cannot.
Why does my signature look cut off?
The target shape is wide and short — 354 by 157 pixels. A signature photographed on a square-ish crop gets letterboxed into that shape. Crop tightly to the ink before adding it here.
Other sizes and tools
Where these numbers come from
Last reviewed 2026-09-04. Also searched as: nsdl photo resize, pan card photo and signature resize, pan card photo and signature size, nsdl pan card photo and signature size online, uti photo and signature resize.