Read the notification before you take the photograph
Where a printed name and date are required, they have to be part of the image when it is taken or added before it is submitted, and the text must be legible in the final uploaded version. Candidates who discover this after taking an otherwise perfect photograph end up repeating the whole process.
Requirements have varied between sessions and between the examinations run by the same agency. Take the specification from the information bulletin for the session you are applying to rather than from a previous year or from any summary elsewhere.
Do not compress the text away
Small text over a photographic background is exactly what lossy compression handles worst. The letters sit on varying tones, and as the quality drops the encoder blurs their edges into the background until they are no longer readable at the size a verifier will view them.
Keep the quality higher than you otherwise would, and reduce the width instead if you need a smaller file. Then look at the result at full size before uploading and confirm you can still read the date.
The photograph itself
A plain light background, even front lighting, face filling a reasonable part of the frame, no cap, no tinted glasses and a neutral expression. Crop to head and shoulders before compressing, which both satisfies the composition and removes the background that was making the file large in the first place.
Questions
- Can I add the name and date to an existing photograph?
- Where the requirement exists, it usually asks for the text to appear on the photograph, and adding it afterwards in an editor is generally accepted provided it is legible and does not obscure the face. Check the wording in the information bulletin, because some instructions specifically ask for it to be printed at the time of capture.
- The text became blurry after I compressed the photo. What should I do?
- Raise the quality and reduce the width instead. Text loses legibility to quality reduction much faster than a face does, so the settings that leave a portrait looking fine can render a date unreadable. Reduce the pixel dimensions until the file fits, keeping quality high, then check the text at full size.
- Is a selfie acceptable for the application?
- Generally not, because the framing, the angle and the lens distortion of a phone held at arm length do not produce a passport style photograph. Have somebody else take it from about a metre away at eye level against a plain wall, in daylight but not direct sun, and it will meet the composition the form is asking for.