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Posted May 14, 2026. Written from our own renewals and from friends who sent us their failed prints to debug.

Online renewal looked easier than the post office. I exported a JPEG around 240 KB — sharp, square, within the pixel count I thought they wanted. The browser spinner ran, then an error about file size. Not face too small. Not eyes closed. Kilobytes.

I opened the preview the site generated after upload. Softer. Slightly mushy around the eyelashes. They recompressed me before a human ever saw the original. My “too big” file was their input; their output was smaller but somehow still over their cap when I pushed quality higher to compensate. Classic treadmill.

What finally uploaded

I exported again with moderate JPEG quality — not minimum, not lossless — until the file landed under their stated ceiling with room to spare. Counter-intuitively, a slightly smaller pixel dimension (still within minimum) helped more than max quality at full 600×600.

I also stripped extra metadata I did not need. Every byte counts on government forms that were designed in an era of smaller cards.

Separate problem from print quality

A file that uploads fine can still look bad printed if DPI metadata is wrong. Upload rules and print rules overlap but are not identical. I treat them as two gates: one for the portal, one for the ruler on paper.

If your portal rejects before review, fix bytes first. If the portal accepts and mail rejects, fix geometry and appearance. Mixing those debug paths wastes weekends.

I wish someone had told me the upload step was its own compression game. Would have saved three exports named final2_REAL.jpg.

More like this on the articles page. When you are ready to crop, open the generator.