Why your photo or signature upload was rejected

Start by separating the two kinds of problem

A rejection is either technical — the file is the wrong size, shape or format — or about content. Technical problems are quick to diagnose and quick to fix. Content problems need a new photograph.

If the portal accepted the upload and then rejected it after review, the problem is usually content. If it refused the file immediately, the problem is almost always technical.

Technical causes, most common first

• The pixel dimensions are wrong. This is the most frequently missed rule, because many people read the file size limit and stop there.
• The file is over the size ceiling. Check the actual byte count rather than what your file manager rounds to.
• The format is wrong. Portals usually want JPEG for photographs. A PNG or a HEIC straight from an iPhone is a common cause.
• The file is on the line and the portal disagrees about what a kilobyte is. Some count 1000 bytes, some 1024. Leave a margin.
• The filename contains characters the portal does not accept, such as spaces, or it is unexpectedly long. Rename it to something simple.
• The image is extremely large in pixel terms even though the file is small, and the portal rejects it on dimensions rather than bytes.

Content causes

• The background is not plain. Patterned walls, doors and furniture are frequently cited.
• The face is too small in the frame, or too large and cropped at the chin or hairline.
• Lighting is uneven, or a hard shadow falls across the face.
• The photograph is old. Many notifications specify a recency window.
• Glasses reflect light, or something covers part of the face.
• The signature is typed rather than handwritten, or not in black ink.
• The signature is cropped so tightly that the stroke touches the edge of the image.
• The upload is a photograph of a printed photograph, which adds blur and a colour cast.

The signature failures people forget

Signatures are judged on different things from photographs, and the limits are much tighter — often 10 or 20 KB, against 20 to 50 KB for a photo.

The most common signature problems are a grey or off-white background from a phone photograph of paper, a signature that fills only a small part of a large canvas, and blue ink where the notification specified black. Cropping tightly around the stroke solves the first two at once.

How to test before you submit

Check the file yourself against each rule in order: byte count, pixel dimensions, format, then content.

On a computer you can see the exact byte count in the file properties. On a phone, most file managers show size in kilobytes and some show dimensions in an information panel.

For content, view the file at full size on a large screen. Problems that are invisible on a phone screen — a slight shadow, a smudge from compression, a background object — are obvious at full size.

If you have run out of attempts

Many portals allow only a limited number of upload attempts, or lock the field after submission. If you are close to the limit, fix everything you can identify before trying again rather than testing one change at a time.

Where a portal has locked a field, the correction window is usually announced separately. Keep watching the official site rather than assuming the opportunity has gone.

Questions people ask