How to fix the "an error occurred while processing your photo" message when applying for a US visa?

I found a work around that will allow you to complete the DS-160 if it is crashing at the photo upload screen.

You just have to upload a photo that WILL NOT pass the photo verification. When your photo is rejected you now have the option to continue without submitting a photo, it then tells you can bring a photo to the interview with you as in the image below. This will allow you to at least submit the application and book an interview.

To have my photo not pass the verification I scaled it down in size to 50% so that it was low res. Other methods may work, keep trying until you get a failure.

The website is very buggy and this is the best solution I can find to get past being stuck at the photo page.

Just had this issue.

The fix that worked for me was to wait a few minutes after uploading it on the screen where it says "the photo passes the requirements*. Then press the "Next" button.

I guess that there's a bunch of services talking to each other behind the scenes, and if you press Next too quickly, the photo hasn't had time to propagate fully yet.

I wrote to the embassy and they suggested I should try starting a new application from scratch. This time it worked!!!

The only difference is that now I filled everything from start to end. Before I saved and upload/retrieve a couple of times.

PS: The last time I used Google Chrome in Incognito mode, but I bet that had nothing to do with it...

I've had similar experience with that tool. I think the solution was to resize the photo to make the face much more prominent. This picture is often given as example but I think the picture that worked for me looked closer to this one.

Also, the picture needs to be 600x600 px and under 240k and it can't be blurred.

The photo check tool is not reliable in my experience.

I did what Mark Clayton suggested - uploaded a bad quality (low resolution) photo. I took it to the embassy with a physical US passport sized photo and it was fine. There were so many people in the queue without photos uploaded on the forms - it clearly happens to a lot of people!

I have also had this issue. Tried many times in many ways but not successful. Finally, I used my friend in a different country to upload my picture from his place, and it worked. I guess the internet security protocol has some security issue when we are uploading from developed countries or countries which are not up to date with the current internet security protocol.