Drop your photograph, get a 480×640 px JPEG between 50 and 200 kB — the IIT JAM (JOAPS) photo window with every official floor cleared. Nothing is uploaded; it all runs in your browser.
JAM — the Joint Admission Test for Masters — is the computer-based exam for admission to M.Sc., M.Sc.–Ph.D. and other postgraduate science programmes at the IITs, with scores also used by IISc and other institutes. A different IIT organizes it each year (IIT Bombay ran JAM 2026), applications go through the JOAPS portal, and the photo spec on the organizing institute’s own Documents Requirement page is precise: a recent, colour, passport-size (3.5 cm W × 4.5 cm H) face photo, JPEG/JPG only, between 240×320 and 480×640 pixels, file size 50 kB to 200 kB, on a white or very light background. The face must fill at least 50% of the frame, looking straight into the camera, with forehead, eyes, nose and chin clearly visible — and no dark or tinted glasses (if your clear glasses glare, they say, take them off for the photo). This page is preset to exactly that: 480×640 — the top of the pixel window, so you keep the most detail — with a 51–195 kB byte target that clears every official reading of the floor and cap. The warning attached is first-party and blunt: photographs of poor resolution — mobile-phone self-portraits are called out by name — can get the application rejected without refund, and the photo you upload is printed on your admit card and scorecard and must match how you look on exam day.
Here is the part nobody tells you: the organizing institute publishes two different floors. The JAM website’s Documents Requirement page says the photo file must be 50 kB–200 kB and the signature 50 kB–150 kB — and that isn’t a one-year typo: IIT Madras’s JAM 2024 site published the same 50 kB floors, and IIT Kanpur’s GATE-JAM office page repeats them verbatim. But the same cycle’s official Information Brochure (119 pages, sections 3.4–3.5) says 20 KB–200 KB for the photo and 10 KB–150 KB for the signature — and adds an aspect-ratio rule the website never mentions (width:height 0.66–0.89 for the photo, 3.15–4.04 for the signature). Both documents are first-party. The safe play costs nothing: aim at or above 51 kB, which satisfies every reading of every floor — PixFit pads with spec-valid JPEG data if the best-quality encode comes out lighter — and 480×640 is ratio 0.75, comfortably inside the brochure’s window. If the JOAPS upload screen in front of you states different numbers, believe the screen and type them into the target fields.
The signature instructions are specific: draw a rectangular box 2 cm high × 7 cm wide on white paper, sign fully inside it, horizontally, in black or dark blue ink — a signature in capital letters, initials, or any other colour is not accepted. Scan it (the spec says a proper scanner, not a phone snap), crop to the box border, and note the pixel window: minimum 80×280, maximum 160×560 — the spec writes those height-first to match the box, so in PixFit’s exact-size field type 560x160. Then the byte rule: the website wants 50 kB–150 kB, and this is where generic tools fail you — a 560×160 signature scan encodes at maybe 15–30 kB even at top quality, under the floor, and compressors can only push down. Run it here with the target set to 145kb and minimum 51kb and PixFit pads it up legitimately. If your scan has grey paper or shadows, tick Signature photo cleanup or use the signature tool first: it finds the ink, whitens the paper, and hands back a clean JPEG.
Search “JAM photo size” and the results mix this exam with IDBI Bank’s JAM — the Junior Assistant Manager bank recruitment, which also takes a photo and signature and whose numbers are an almost perfect inversion of these: the bank’s photo ceiling is 50 kb — this exam’s floor. A 45 KB file sized for the bank form under-floors the JAM website spec; a 150 KB file sized for this exam is three times the bank’s cap. If you’re applying to the bank, use the IDBI Bank JAM page; if you’re after an M.Sc. seat, you’re in the right place.
The confusion runs the other way too. IIT Kanpur operates a combined GATE-JAM office, and its photograph-and-signature page prints both specs on one page — GATE first (200×260 to 530×690 px, 5–600 KB), then JAM. Skim it wrong and you’ll produce a 530×690 file that is outside JAM’s 480×640 cap entirely. A widely-ranked JAM resizer, meanwhile, sells only the brochure reading — its checker passes a 15 kB signature that the website spec floors at 50 — and its how-to article calls 160×560 the minimum signature size (it’s the maximum; the minimum is 80×280). Applying to both exams this season? The GATE page carries that spec with its own presets — the two share aspect-ratio ideas but almost no numbers.
For JAM 2026, registration on JOAPS ran September 5 – October 12, 2025 and the exam was held February 15, 2026 in two sessions across seven test papers — open to all nationals, no age restriction. Fees: ₹2,000 for one test paper (₹1,000 for female, SC, ST and PwD candidates), ₹2,700/₹1,350 for two; corrections to category, gender, city or date of birth cost ₹300, as does adding or changing a test paper before the cut-off. That cycle is complete — the JAM 2027 website wasn’t live as this was written, and registration historically opens in early September, so prepare the photo and signature now and the form becomes ten minutes of work. The organizing institute changes yearly and republishes the spec; the new cycle’s own website and the JOAPS upload screen win over this page if anything differs. Everything here runs in your browser — photo and signature never leave your device, and the re-encode strips EXIF metadata (including GPS) as a side effect.
Spec sources: the JAM 2026 website’s Documents Requirement page at jam2026.iitb.ac.in (photo 240×320–480×640 px, 50–200 kB; signature 80×280–160×560 px, 50–150 kB), the JAM 2026 Information Brochure PDF sections 3.4–3.5 (same pixels; 20–200 KB / 10–150 KB with aspect-ratio windows 0.66–0.89 and 3.15–4.04), IIT Madras’s JAM 2024 photo page and IIT Kanpur’s GATE-JAM office page — all read August 2026. The organizing institute’s current-cycle website and the JOAPS upload screen win over this page.