Recruitment and admission forms increasingly ask for documents — caste, EWS, domicile, NCL-OBC certificates, Class 10/12 mark sheets, degree certificates — with tight limits like 100 KB, 200 KB or 500 KB. A phone scan is usually 2–8 MB. Squeeze it carelessly and the verifying officer cannot read it; that is a far bigger problem than a failed upload. Here is how to hit the limit and stay readable.
1. Start with a good scan
- Flat and straight. Place the document on a dark table so the edges are easy to crop. Shoot from directly above.
- Daylight, no flash. Flash creates a shiny patch that hides stamps and signatures.
- Use a scanner app's "document" mode if you have one — it flattens and whitens the page, which also makes the file compress much smaller.
- Crop away everything outside the paper. Table edges and fingers waste kilobytes.
2. Choose the right format
Read the notification: some portals want PDF, some want JPG.
- For JPG, use the certificate resizer or mark sheet resizer.
- For PDF, use Compress PDF or the one-tap Compress PDF to 200 KB. Multiple pages? Merge first, then compress.
- Have a JPG but the portal wants PDF? Image to PDF.
3. Why size and readability fight — and how to win
A certificate is mostly white paper with small black text. Colour photos of it waste space on paper texture and shadows. Three things shrink it without hurting the text:
- Lower the resolution sensibly. An A4 page at about 1240 × 1754 px (150 DPI) keeps printed text sharp; going under ~1000 px wide is where small print starts to blur.
- Convert to black and white or greyscale when colour does not matter. Our PDF to black & white tool often halves the size. Keep colour if the stamp or hologram must be visible and the notification says colour.
- Only then lower JPG quality. Quality around 60–75% is usually invisible for text documents.
4. Check before you upload
Open the compressed file on your phone and zoom to 100%. You should be able to read: your name, the certificate number, the issuing authority, the date, and the stamp/signature. If any of these is unreadable, go one step back — higher resolution or quality — even if it means a few more KB.
Common problems
- Still over the limit at readable quality: crop margins tighter, switch to greyscale, or split a two-sided document only if the portal allows two files.
- "PDF is password protected": some downloaded e-certificates (DigiLocker, state portals) are locked. Use Unlock PDF with the password you were given.
- Rotated page: fix it with Rotate PDF before compressing — verifiers dislike sideways documents.
Everything above runs inside your browser: documents with your caste, income or Aadhaar details never leave your device.