A TNPSC exam photo is a 130 × 170 px image with a white strip across the bottom 55 px. The strip shows your name and the date the photo was taken. Your face fills the 115 px above it. This guide covers what goes in that strip and how to add it without breaking the rest of the photo.
Adding the strip in a few taps
In the TNPSC photo compressor, choose your studio photo, type your name, pick the photography date and select Prepare photo. The tool draws the strip, fits your portrait above it, and saves a JPEG that already meets the file size limit. Because the preview shows the final pixels, you can see exactly how your name will look before you download.
A general photo editor can do the same, but by hand: add a white band of the right height, centre two lines of text, then resize and compress the whole image. Each step can shift the final size, which is a common cause of upload failures.
Which date to enter
Enter the day the photo was actually taken, not today's date and not the day you apply.
Each exam notice asks for a photo taken on or after the notification date. For Group IV 11/2026 that is 6 October 2026, and for Group II / IIA 07/2026 it is 11 August 2026. With either preset selected, the tool rejects earlier dates and future dates. It can only check the date you typed, though. It has no way to know when the shutter clicked.
People often search for "TNPSC photo date change" when their photo is from an earlier recruitment. Changing the printed date does not make an old photo valid. It misstates when the photo was taken. A new studio photo costs less than a rejected application.
How to write your name
Use the name as it appears in your application. Initials before the name are normal, for example A. ARUN.
The tool centres the name and scales it to fit 130 px. If a long name would become too small to read, it asks you to shorten it instead of cutting letters off. Use initials for the middle parts of your name rather than dropping your family name.
The date is printed as DD/MM/YYYY, for example 06/11/2026.
When the studio already printed it
Many studios in Tamil Nadu print the name and date before handing over the file. Don't add a second strip. In the tool, tick My photo already has my name and date, and it resizes the whole image, studio strip included, without adding text.
Two things to check in the preview:
- Zoom out until the whole strip is inside the frame. If the crop cuts through the text, it will be unreadable.
- Read the text at the final size. Studio strips are often taller than 55 px with small lettering. Once the photo is reduced to 130 × 170 px, a small font can blur into a grey line. If it does, ask the studio for the file without the strip and add your own.
If the studio misspelt your name or used the wrong date, the same applies: get the plain photo and add the strip yourself.