Hello there I have 2 questions:
1) If I am inviting a friend of mine to Canada, what should I submit as proof of relationship? I have pictures that I took with my friend and his family when I was visiting them few months ago in Iran. Can I use those pictures as proof of relationship?
2) Some documents ie: previous 4 months of bank statements are larger then 4MB. How should I upload them. I even compress the PDF file but still larger than 4MB.
There are different ways. I usually just convert them to JPG with a lower resolution and then convert them back to PDF and documents look nice still. I use this software called JPG resizer because it has an option to lower the resolution of a JPG. PDF documents that were 40mb ended up being just like 400KB. Some documents just end up with a tiny size of 50kb-100kb. Using this method, I have managed to combine multiples documents together and most of the times, I don't even reach 3mb.
So first you need nitro pdf, pdf escape or a similar software to convert the PDF to JPG. After the files are JPG, then use JPG resizer and lower their resolution where it says "specify percentage of size" choose something like 50% or 40%. Then use the same software you used in step 1 to combine them all together in 1 PDF. You can also sort them and I assure you using this method, even if your files contain graphics, they will be lower than 500kb each, most of the times they end up being around 100kb-200kb.
Now, I know there is an app someone recommended to reduce the size of a PDF. This might be easier but I have used one of those apps and it did reduce the size but not enough for me to combine multiple documents (multiple bank statements, job letters all together) they would end up with a size of 4-6mb.
This is the app I used to resize the JPG
http://downloads.informer.com/jpeg-resizer/download/
To answer the question number 1, my current wife invited me to Canada once and all we included as proof we were friends was a 1 page invitation letter signed by her and her mother since at that time, she did not have an income. Now, this was a couple of years ago and I'm sure it also depends on your nationality and ties to the country where you reside.
Since you are from IRAN, you are better off searching around the forum for answers or waiting for someone from Iran or a similar country to tell you about this because I know CIC takes it easier with applicants from certain countries. Applicants from some countries such as Pakistan, India, Philippines unfortunately will need to submit more proof in order to get their applications approved.
Some people will argue that if your friend has the opposite gender to you then you should be careful not including too much proof... because CIC might think he/she wants to go there for another reason other than just a visit. Now I warn you, if you say you are friends in the application and you actually end up lets say getting married, then this might come hunt you when your friends applies for PR. If she is your girlfriend or boyfriend, you need to be clear.
Now if you are the same gender as your friend, including a couple of pictures won't hurt, assuming the pictures are completely healthy for a friendship (not romantic pics or getting too close to each other).
