Compress a photo to 300 KB as a JPG
The Colombia visa photo has to be a JPG under 300 KB. Upload yours, frame the face and download it at the exact weight the portal asks for.
or drag it here. JPG, PNG, WEBP or iPhone HEIC.
Nothing is uploaded. Everything runs inside your browser.
Drag the photo to centre the face inside the oval.
- JPG format, not PNG and not PDF
- 300 KB maximum
- In colour, white background, 3 x 4 cm
- Uploaded separately, not inside the documents PDF
- The documents, separately, have a 5 MB total ceiling
Source: the application screen of the SITAC portal (tramitesmre.cancilleria.gov.co) and the Abecé de visas published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Checked on 30 August 2026.
Always send what your own screen says. If it shows a different figure, that one wins.
Why this is separate from the PDF tool
They are two different problems. Documents go up as PDFs and compete for a shared 5 MB budget. The photo goes up on its own, as a JPG, with its own 300 KB ceiling. Putting both on one screen confuses everybody, so the photo lives here and the documents live in the document tool.
The technical difference matters too. A PDF is compressed page by page and you have to decide which pages are text and which are scans. A photo is a single image: crop it, set the resolution, then find the highest JPG quality that still fits under the limit.
How the fitting works
When you press Prepare the photo, the tool runs a binary search across compression levels and keeps the best one that lands under your limit. It does not compress blindly to the floor: if the photo fits in 300 KB at 88 percent quality, you get 88 percent.
If even the most aggressive compression misses the limit, it drops the resolution in 18 percent steps and tries again. You get told when that happens, because it means you asked for more than the photo could give.
It never enlarges a small photo. If your crop is 300 pixels tall and you ask for 600, you get 300. Stretching pixels adds weight, not detail.
The three modes
3:4 portrait
The ID photo shape. The dashed oval marks where the face should sit: centred, with a little space above the head and the frame coming down to the shoulders. Drag the photo and use the slider to zoom in.
1:1 square
For platforms that want a square photo, corporate profile avatars and some university forms.
No crop
Keeps the whole photo and only adjusts weight and resolution. This is the mode for when someone asks you for an image under a certain size and the framing does not matter.
Check these before you upload
- An actually white background, with no shadow cast behind the head.
- Light in front. If the window is behind you, your face goes dark.
- Neutral expression, no sunglasses, no hat, looking at the camera.
- No portrait mode and no filters. Blurring the background moves it away from the plain white they asked for.
- Open the result at 100 percent and look at the eyes. Square blocks mean you should raise the KB limit.
Common questions
How do I get a photo down to 300 KB as a JPG?
Upload the photo, frame the face inside the 3:4 box, leave the limit at 300 KB and press Prepare the photo. The tool finds the highest JPG quality that still fits under that weight and hands you a .jpg file ready to upload.
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. Everything runs inside your browser on a canvas. The photo never reaches a server and the tool keeps working offline once the page has loaded.
Why does the photo go as a JPG and not a PDF?
The SITAC portal asks for the photograph as a JPG of at most 300 KB, uploaded in a different field from the documents. Documents go as PDFs, with a 5 MB ceiling for the total attached.
What resolution does a 3 by 4 centimetre photo need?
Around 450 by 600 pixels is enough for a 3 by 4 centimetre photo on screen and on most portals. That is the size the tool proposes by default.
Does it accept HEIC photos from an iPhone?
Yes. HEIC and HEIF files are converted to JPG inside the browser before cropping. It also accepts PNG and WEBP.