A 500 KB JPG test file

About this file

A 500 KB test file in JPG format, sized to exactly 512,000 bytes. Free to download with no signup, for verifying upload limits and file-handling behaviour.

The MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256 values listed above are the real digests of this file. Recomputing them after download confirms the transfer was not corrupted, and they double as known-good expected values when testing a hashing library.

What this size means in practice

500 KB is a realistic size for a single high-resolution photo. It puts a load close to real-world data on front-end image optimisation and preview-generation paths.

Base64-encoded it grows to roughly 667 KB, because Base64 inflates data by about 33%. If you embed files in data URIs, email attachments, or JSON payloads, your limits must account for that expansion.

Getting a feel for this size

On a 10 Mbps link the transfer takes roughly 410 ms, and about 41 ms at 100 Mbps. Base64-encoded it grows to roughly 667 KB.

Estimating a photographic JPG at roughly 0.2 bytes per pixel, this size works out to around 2,560,000 pixels — about 1,848 × 1,386 px at a 4:3 aspect ratio. Compression varies enormously with image content, so treat this purely as an order-of-magnitude figure.

What to check for this format

JPEG is lossy and has no transparency. Its signature begins with FF D8 FF. The single most common defect in real implementations is ignoring the EXIF Orientation tag, which makes rotated photos appear sideways in the browser.

• Whether you read EXIF Orientation and auto-rotate, or deliberately strip it
• Whether privacy-sensitive data such as GPS coordinates remains — stripping is mandatory for user-submitted images
• Whether both progressive and baseline JPEG decode correctly — older decoders sometimes fail on progressive