GitHub Education evidence capture becomes blurry after photo is taken

[lorenzo1-1]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Evidence and Image Capture

Hi everyone,

Hi everyone,

I’m repeatedly running into what seems to be a technical issue with the GitHub Education evidence-capture flow.

Before taking the photo, my academic evidence is clear and readable. However, once the countdown finishes and GitHub processes the image, the preview appears noticeably blurred/degraded. This has happened on every attempt, including when using a recent iPhone 17 camera.

My application is then immediately rejected because the automated verification says it cannot identify information that is clearly present in the original evidence, including my full name, school name, current enrolment information and a current date.

I’ve already made sure my GitHub profile and billing information use the same full legal name as my academic evidence.

The issue appears to be specifically with the image capture/processing step: the camera preview is sharp, but the resulting image shown before submission looks significantly blurrier.

Has anyone else experienced this or found a workaround, such as using a particular browser/device or changing camera settings?

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[antonisloukis]

Hey, that definitely sounds like the image is getting compressed or processed after the photo is taken rather than the camera itself being the issue.
Since you’ve already tested with a recent iPhone, I’d try a different browser first, or another device if you have access to one. Also make sure the document is filling most of the frame, there’s good lighting, and no zoom is being used.

If the preview is already blurry before you submit it, I’d avoid sending it repeatedly and report it as a capture/processing issue, because GitHub Education may be receiving that degraded version too.

[lorenzo1-1]

Thank you for your reply.

I’ve now retried in Chrome using mobile data instead of Wi-Fi and the same image degradation happens, so the network connection doesn’t appear to be the cause.

I also tried Safari as an alternative browser, but GitHub Education reports that it cannot access my location despite Location Services, precise location and Safari website permissions all being enabled. Chrome can access my location on the same device.

So at the moment Chrome allows me through the application but appears to degrade the captured image, while Safari won’t let me through the location check at all.

[antonisloukis]

No worries. Since it happens on both Wi-Fi and mobile data, that makes the connection itself pretty unlikely to be the cause.

The Safari issue sounds separate — probably the location permission/check failing before the Education flow can continue. Since Chrome gets past the location check but still produces the blurry image, I’d probably stick with Chrome for now and treat the image degradation as the main issue.

At this point I’d report it to GitHub Support with the exact device/browser you tested and mention that the photo is clear before capture but degraded only after GitHub processes it. That detail should help them narrow it down to the capture/processing step rather than the camera or network.

[lorenzo1-1]

That’s actually the problem I’m running into. GitHub Support won’t let me submit a ticket for this type of Education issue. The support flow says individual Education application issues are no longer handled and directs me to this Community instead.

So I’m currently stuck in a loop where Support directs me here, but the advice here is to contact Support. Is there a specific support category or escalation route for a technical bug with the Education evidence-capture system?

[antonisloukis]

Ah okay, that explains the loop. If GitHub Support is explicitly refusing Education application tickets, then I don’t think there’s a separate public escalation route you’re missing.

At this point I’d keep this Discussion open and make the technical part as reproducible as possible: device model, iOS version, browser/version, that Chrome passes location but degrades the image after capture, and that Safari fails the location check even with permissions enabled.

Since the same degradation happens on both Wi-Fi and mobile data, that’s actually useful evidence that it’s probably not your network. Hopefully a GitHub staff member can pick this up from the Discussion as an Education capture bug rather than treating it as a normal application-verification problem.
I’d also avoid repeatedly submitting the blurry evidence in the meantime, since that could just keep triggering the same automated rejection.

[hoangperry]

Adding a few practical workarounds to the compression point above, since the degradation happens server-side and you can't turn it off — the goal is to make the document survive the downscale:

1. Make the text physically larger in frame. Fill the entire frame with just the critical region (name + school + date), rather than the whole document. When the image gets downscaled, oversized text stays readable; a full A4 page in frame turns into mush.
2. Try a laptop webcam + Chrome instead of the iPhone. Counterintuitively, high-resolution phone photos get downscaled more aggressively; several people have had captures pass from a mediocre laptop camera because the source resolution was closer to what the processor keeps. Safari's camera pipeline has also specifically caused trouble with this flow.
3. Flat, even light, no shadows — compression artifacts concentrate around shadow gradients on paper.
4. If every capture still comes out degraded, that's worth reporting through https://support.github.com/contact/education with a before/after screenshot pair like you described — a capture pipeline that destroys legibility on an iPhone 17 is diagnosable on their side, and they can see what the processed image actually looked like to the verifier.