Drop your photo, get a portrait 3:4 JPEG inside the INZ upload window — preset here to 1200×1600 pixels between 512 KB and 3 MB, numbers that pass both of INZ’s published readings of the spec. Nothing is uploaded; it all runs in your browser.
Online applications for a New Zealand visa or an NZeTA (the electronic travel authority required of visa-waiver visitors and cruise passengers) take one digital photo, JPG/JPEG only, taken within the last 6 months. Immigration New Zealand's photo-standards page states the file must be between 512 KB and 3.14 MB, portrait, with a 3:4 aspect ratio. Their own upload-error help page, which quotes what the portal actually enforces, states between 500 KB and 3 MB and between 900×1200 and 2250×3000 pixels. Both pages are live at once, so this page presets the numbers that satisfy every reading: 1200×1600 pixels, between 512 KB and 3 MB. If the upload screen for your application says something else, the portal wins.
Most rejected files fail on bytes, not content. Over 3 MB: a modern phone photo is routinely 4–8 MB; PixFit binary-searches for the best JPEG quality that fits under the cap. iPhone HEIC: the portal takes JPG/JPEG only — drop the HEIC straight in, it's decoded in your browser and comes out as a JPEG. Wrong shape: phone cameras shoot 3:4 in portrait mode already (a 3024×4032 shot crops to 1200×1600 losslessly in shape), but a landscape or square photo gets cropped, and that can break the face must cover 70–80% of the frame rule — check the result, and drag the crop preview so your head sits centred with a clear gap around it. Upside-down or rotated: PixFit applies the camera's orientation tag to the pixels, which fixes the “photo must be upright” class of error.
This spec has a real minimum, and a clean 1200×1600 encode of a smooth, well-lit photo can land under it even at top quality. PixFit will pad a JPEG up to the floor with a spec-valid comment segment — but here that's the second-best fix. INZ's floor exists as a quality proxy, and their checker separately rejects photos of “insufficient resolution”, so the better move is more real pixels: set Exact size to 1800×2400 or 2250×3000 and the same photo clears 512 KB naturally with detail the software can use. If your source is small because a messaging app recompressed it, no resize fixes that — get the original file (“document” or “actual size” mode) or retake the photo.
INZ is blunt: no filters, no beautification features, no AI editing tools, no changes to colour, brightness, contrast or sharpness, no digitally removing objects — an AI-enhanced photo can get the application delayed or declined, and phones that auto-filter should have the feature turned off before shooting. Resizing is different: INZ's own error-help page tells you to resize a file that misses the pixel or byte window — that's file plumbing, and it's all PixFit does. It re-encodes at a different size and quality; it never retouches, and the re-encode strips EXIF/GPS metadata as a side effect. Keep the untouched original in case INZ asks for it.
Everything the face-recognition software actually screens: straight-on pose with no tilt or turn, neutral expression with mouth closed and eyes open, no shadows on face or background, good contrast against a plain, neutral background, exactly one face in frame with no bold clothing patterns (patterns can register as extra faces), hair off the ears, head coverings only for religious or medical reasons, glasses clear and glare-free — INZ suggests removing them. Selfies are accepted only in the NZeTA mobile app, and even there arm's-length with the phone at eyebrow height. Paper visa applications use a printed 35×45 mm photo instead, and an NZeTA can only be applied for online. Check the current standards at immigration.govt.nz before you submit. Travelling elsewhere? See the Australian citizenship and US visa pages.