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Preparing product photos for online marketplaces

Most sellers lose more sales to image technicalities than to bad photography. A photo can be sharp, well-lit and genuinely attractive, and still fail: too small to trigger the zoom feature, the wrong aspect ratio for the gallery, cropped differently on every platform, or heavy enough that it slows the page down on mobile.

This guide covers what the major marketplaces actually require, why each requirement exists, and a repeatable process for preparing a whole catalogue without doing it image by image.

Start with the requirement, not with the photo

The instinct when preparing images is to open a photo and ask "how should I resize this?" The better order is the reverse: decide which platform and which slot the image is for, read the requirement, then work backwards.

The reason is that requirements conflict across platforms. Amazon wants a square main image on a pure white background. Several platforms crop the first image to a square themselves, from the centre, whether you planned for it or not. A marketplace with a strict file size cap will reject a technically perfect 4000 px photo. There is no single "correct" export size that satisfies all of them, so the target has to be chosen first.

Pixel sizes by platform

Why 1000 px is the number that keeps appearing

Several platforms use the same 1000 px threshold for a different reason: it is roughly where zoom becomes useful on a high-density display. Below it, a shopper zooming in sees interpolation blur rather than detail, so the platform disables the feature entirely.

The consequence is that a 999 px image and a 1001 px image, which look identical in isolation, behave completely differently in the listing. One supports zoom, one does not. If a platform's threshold sits between your export size and the requirement, you lose the feature for a difference nobody can see.

This is why exporting at a comfortable margin above the threshold — 1600 px or 2000 px, rather than exactly 1000 px — is worth the extra file size. It costs a little bandwidth and removes an entire class of problem.

The three ways to fit an image into a frame

Any resize operation has to answer one question: the source has one aspect ratio, the target frame has another, and the pixels have to go somewhere. There are only three possible answers.

Pad — keep everything, add background

The photo is scaled until it fits inside the frame, and the remainder is filled with a background colour. Nothing is lost. This is the correct choice for a main listing image on a platform that demands a square, because cropping a product away is usually worse than having some empty space around it.

For Amazon and most other marketplaces that require white, set the pad colour to exactly #ffffff. A "nearly white" background reads as light grey when it sits next to the pure white of a search results grid, and it looks like a mistake.

Crop — fill the frame, lose the edges

The photo is scaled until it covers the whole frame, and the overflow is trimmed equally from both long sides. Use it for lifestyle or in-context shots where the subject is central and the edges carry no information. Never use it for a photo where the product touches the frame edge — it will be cut in half.

Stretch — change the aspect ratio

Width and height are forced independently. This is only safe when the aspect ratios already match, for example turning a 3000 × 3000 export into 1000 × 1000. Applied to anything else it visibly distorts the product, and a distorted product reads as an untrustworthy listing. When in doubt, pad instead.

File size, quality and where the compression actually hurts

Marketplaces impose file size limits, and sellers usually respond by dropping JPEG quality until the file fits. That is usually the wrong lever. Quality reduction introduces blocking artefacts first around high-contrast edges — which is exactly where text, logos and product outlines live.

The better order of operations is:

1. Reduce the pixel dimensions first. Halving the width and height removes three quarters of the pixel count. If the platform only needs 1600 px, sending 4000 px and compressing it hard is strictly worse than sending 1600 px at high quality.
2. Then adjust quality within a sane range. For product photography, 90% is a good default. 80% is acceptable when fighting a limit. Below 70%, artefacts become visible on any image containing text or fine pattern.
3. Consider the format last. JPEG is the right default for photographs. PNG only when transparency is needed. WebP gives better compression than JPEG at the same quality and is now widely supported, but some older marketplace upload pipelines still handle it poorly — check before converting a whole catalogue.

A repeatable workflow for a whole catalogue

Doing this well is less about any single image and more about consistency. The process that scales:

1. Keep originals untouched. Store the full-resolution files from your camera or supplier in a separate folder that nothing writes to. Treat every resized set as a derived export.
2. Group by target, not by product. Process everything destined for Amazon in one pass, then everything for eBay in another. Mixed batches are where settings get applied inconsistently.
3. Fix the aspect ratio before anything else. The single most common cause of a rejected or badly cropped main image is a non-square source uploaded to a square slot. Pad to a square first, deliberately, so you control where the empty space goes.
4. Do not upscale. Enlarging a 600 px photo to 2000 px produces a soft file that is larger and no better. If the source is too small, the answer is a better source.
5. Process the whole listing with identical settings. Images inside one listing should share dimensions. Mixed sizes make the gallery jump as a shopper clicks through it, which reads as low quality.
6. Name files meaningfully. Consistent names such as sku-main.jpg, sku-detail-01.jpg make bulk uploads far easier to audit later. Marketplaces generally ignore the filename for SEO, but your future self will not.

The mistakes that get images rejected

• Off-white backgrounds. Photographed on a cream wall or in warm indoor light, then padded to "white". The pad is white, the product's surroundings are not, and the seam is obvious.
• Product too small in frame. Amazon's main image guidance asks for the product to fill roughly 85% of the frame. A generous margin around the product looks like a thumbnail next to competitors.
• Wrong slot rules. Main images typically forbid text, logos, borders and watermarks; secondary images allow them. Applying one rule to both is a frequent cause of rejection.
• Transparency flattened to black. Converting a PNG with a transparent background to JPEG without setting a fill colour produces black rectangles behind the product. If you are converting to JPEG, explicitly choose a background colour.
• Processing the resized files instead of the originals. Resizing a resized file compounds lossy compression and softens the image each time. Always re-export from the original.

Questions

Do I need different images for mobile and desktop?

No. Marketplaces serve one image and scale it. One sufficiently large, correctly proportioned image covers both. This is another argument for exporting above the minimum threshold rather than exactly at it.

Can I fix a low-resolution photo by upscaling it?

Not meaningfully. Upscaling interpolates between existing pixels; it cannot invent detail. A 600 px photo enlarged to 2000 px is larger, softer and no more useful. Reshoot or obtain the original at full resolution.

Does the file name affect search ranking on marketplaces?

On most marketplaces, no — the listing title, attributes and category drive internal search. The filename matters mainly for your own workflow during bulk uploads. On your own website, a descriptive filename is a small positive signal for image search.

Should I put the same photos on every platform?

Yes for the product itself, but resize per platform rather than reusing one export. Square requirements, maximum file sizes and background rules differ, and a compromise size typically fails the strictest platform while wasting bandwidth on the rest.

What about video and 360-degree images?

Those follow separate specifications and are outside the scope of a still-image resizer. Check the platform's media documentation for frame sizes and bitrate limits.

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• Resize Product Photos — the tool
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