PAN Card Photo or Signature Rejected? Common Reasons and How to Fix Them

Some of Protean's own help articles mention limits up to 50 KB, and UTIITSL's portal shows its limits on its upload screen. Files that meet the stricter 20 KB and 10 KB limits above are accepted wherever the larger limit applies, so it makes sense to aim for those.

Portal screens and application rules change. If the upload page shows a different limit from this table, follow the page.

Your phone does not work in centimetres, so convert the print size first. One inch is 2.54 cm, and 200 dpi means 200 pixels per inch.

• Photo height: 3.5 cm ÷ 2.54 = 1.378 inches × 200 = about 276 pixels.
• Photo width: 2.5 cm ÷ 2.54 = 0.984 inches × 200 = about 197 pixels.
• Signature width: 4.5 cm ÷ 2.54 × 200 = about 354 pixels.
• Signature height: 2 cm ÷ 2.54 × 200 = about 157 pixels.

So the photo is a 197 × 276 px portrait and the signature is a 354 × 157 px landscape strip. These are the sizes the PAN preset in our resizer produces. A camera photo of 4000 × 3000 px has over 200 times as many pixels as the PAN photo, which is why it is several megabytes and why simply lowering quality without resizing ends in a blurred, blocky face.

For the size limit, 20 KB can mean 20,000 or 20,480 bytes depending on the portal. Staying at or below 20,000 bytes (and 10,000 bytes for the signature) passes either way.

• The file is over the limit. A 21 KB photo fails a 20 KB rule even though it looks fine. Check the size in bytes shown by your file manager or by the tool, not a rounded figure.
• The format is wrong. iPhones save HEIC and screenshots are PNG; renaming a file to .jpg does not convert it. Export a real JPEG.
• The photo is black and white. The specification asks for a colour photograph; only supporting documents are scanned in black and white.
• The face is not clearly visible: too dark, too far from the camera, a shadow across one side, sunglasses, a cap, or a beauty filter that smooths the face. The instructions say the face must be clearly visible, and a blurred 20 KB photo fails that test.
• The shape is wrong. A landscape photo squeezed into a portrait box, or a signature stretched to fill a square, looks distorted. Crop to the right shape; never stretch.
• The signature is faint or messy: blue ballpoint on lined or coloured paper, a shadow from the phone, or ink touching the edges of the image. Protean advises black ink on plain white paper.
• The files are swapped. Uploading the signature in the photo slot (or the reverse) happens more often than you would think when both files have names like IMG_2041.jpg. Rename them photo.jpg and signature.jpg before you start.
• The signature differs from the one on your documents. Sign the way you normally sign on bank and identity documents, not a neater version made for the form.

1. Photo: stand facing a window in daylight, against a plain white or light wall. Ask someone to take the picture at eye level from about an arm's length, with your head and the top of your shoulders in the frame. No glasses glare, no cap, no filter.
2. Signature: sign two or three times on plain white paper with a black pen, and photograph the best one from directly above in good light so the phone casts no shadow.
3. Open the PAN Card Photo Resizer, choose the PAN photo preset and select your photo. Move the crop so your face fills most of the height, as on a passport photo, and download the JPG.
4. Choose the PAN signature preset, or use the Signature Resizer, which trims the empty paper around the ink and turns the paper pure white before fitting the file under 10 KB.
5. Before uploading, check the result: the size should be at or below 20 KB for the photo and 10 KB for the signature, and you should be able to recognise your face and read every stroke of the signature at normal zoom.

Proofs such as Aadhaar or a passport go up as separate files of at most 300 KB per page. Scan or photograph each page flat, convert it with Image to PDF, and if a page is still too big, compress the PDF rather than shrinking the photo until the text is unreadable.

Some routes still need a printed acknowledgement or form sent by post. Protean's instructions for those are specific:

• Paste a recent 3.5 × 2.5 cm colour photograph in the space provided. Do not staple or clip it.
• Sign, or put your left thumb impression, inside the box provided. The signature must not go across or on the photograph.
• A thumb impression must be attested by a Magistrate, Notary Public or Gazetted Officer under official seal and stamp.
• For a minor, the photo is still required, but it is not printed on the PAN card.

If you have never been allotted a PAN, are not a minor, and have an Aadhaar with a mobile number linked to it, you can get an instant e-PAN on the Income Tax e-filing portal. The portal's FAQ says no scanned photo or signature is needed for this route; it works from your Aadhaar details with an OTP. The name, date of birth and gender on your Aadhaar must be correct first, because they are used as they are.

Changing the photo or signature on an existing PAN is a correction request on the Protean or UTIITSL portal, and uses the same upload limits as a new application.