Based on the dressed state formalism, we obtain the adiabatic criterion of the sum frequency conversion. We show that this constraint restricts the energy conversion between the two dressed fields, which are superpositions of the signal field and the sum frequency field. We also show that the evolution of the populations of the dressed fields, which in turn describes the conversion of light photons from the seed frequency to the sum frequency during propagation through the nonlinear crystal. Take the quasiphased matched (QPM) scheme as an example, we calculate the expected bandwidth of the frequency conversion process, and its dependence on the length of the crystal. We demonstrate that the evolutionary patterns of the sum frequency field's energy are similar to the Fresnel diffraction of a light field. We finally show that the expected bandwidth can be also deduced from the evolution of the adiabaticity of the dressed fileds.