PAN Card Photo & Signature Size: NSDL & UTIITSL Guide 2026

Last updated: July 2026

Applying for a PAN card is one of the few government processes in India where you get to choose between two different portals — NSDL and UTIITSL — and it's easy to mix up which specification applies where. This guide covers the exact photo and signature requirements, what the DPI numbers actually mean for a digital upload, and how the two portals differ.

PAN Card Photo and Signature Specification

NSDL vs UTIITSL — Which One Should You Use?

Both NSDL, now operating under the Protean eGov Technologies brand, and UTIITSL are authorized by the Income Tax Department to process PAN applications — for a brand new PAN, a correction to an existing one, or a reprint of a lost card. There's no rule that ties you to one or the other based on where you live or which bank you use; you simply choose whichever portal's application flow you find more straightforward. The photo and signature specification is broadly the same across both, but the online forms differ in layout, the exact upload widget used, and how you track your application status afterward using your acknowledgment number. If you start an application on one portal, you generally cannot switch to the other partway through — so it helps to decide upfront and stick with it.

What "300 DPI" and "600 DPI" Actually Mean Here

DPI, or dots per inch, is a print resolution measure — it tells a printer how many pixels to pack into each inch of physical paper. A 213×213 pixel image at 300 DPI corresponds to roughly a 1.8cm × 1.8cm print area, which lines up with the small photo box on the physical PAN card. In practice, when you're resizing a digital photo in a browser, what actually determines print sharpness is the pixel count relative to that final print size — 213×213 pixels is already the "300 DPI equivalent" resolution for a photo that small, regardless of what DPI value is stored in the file's metadata. Most PAN application portals validate the pixel dimensions and file size of your upload, not the embedded DPI tag, which is a technical detail that trips up some applicants trying to manually set a DPI value in image editing software when it isn't actually necessary.

Getting Your Signature Sharp Enough

Because your signature is printed at a very small size on the physical PAN card, portals ask for it to be captured at a higher resolution than the photo — 600 DPI — so that thin pen strokes don't blur or break up when printed. Sign in dark ink on plain white paper, scan or photograph it in bright, even light without shadows, and avoid a large empty margin around the signature that later gets scaled down along with the actual strokes, which can effectively lower the usable detail.

Common Reasons PAN Photo Uploads Fail

The most frequent issue is simply file size — a modern phone photo can be several megabytes, far above the 30KB ceiling, and needs deliberate compression, not just resizing. The second most common issue is a non-square photo forced into the 213×213px square without cropping first, which distorts the face. If you're applying for a PAN card around the same time as a government exam, keep in mind the specifications are different — a photo prepared for UPSC or SSC won't automatically fit the PAN card box, so resize each one separately. For any other document that needs a custom pixel size not covered here, our general image resizer lets you enter exact dimensions and compress to a target file size.

Frequently Asked Questions