Product Photography for Amazon & Shopify: A Seller's Guide

Every platform has its own image rules. Marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy set requirements you have to meet; your own Shopify store sets almost none, which makes consistency your job. This guide covers what Amazon, Shopify, and Etsy say about product images, taken from their own documentation, and how to produce one set of photos that works across all three.

Amazon Product Image Requirements

Amazon is the most prescriptive of the three. The figures below come from Amazon's guide to product photos. The full image policy lives in Seller Central Help and has additional rules for some categories, such as apparel and jewelry, so read the version for your category before uploading.

All Images

• Every product must have at least one image; Amazon recommends at least six.
• 500 to 10,000 pixels on the longest side. Images larger than 1,000 pixels on each side are preferred, so shoppers can zoom.
• JPEG, TIFF, PNG, or non-animated GIF, with JPEG preferred.
• Clear, not pixelated, and without jagged edges.

Main Image

• White background (RGB 255, 255, 255) in most cases. Near-white is not the same thing; check the corners with a color picker.
• Fill 85% or more of the frame, without cutting off parts of the product.
• Standard angle. Amazon's guide recommends standard views such as front, side, or 45 degrees over creative angles.
• Only what the buyer receives. Leave props, extra accessories, and text for secondary images.

Secondary Images

Amazon's guide describes individual, group, lifestyle, scale, detail, and packaging shots. A set that covers most products:

• Alternate angles: back, side, top, framed like the main image.
• Lifestyle: the product in use in a realistic setting, without props or models that pull attention away from it.
• Scale: in a hand, on a person, or next to a familiar object.
• Detail: materials, texture, ports, stitching.
• Features and dimensions: a clean image with callouts added in a design tool.
• In the box: everything included, laid out.

If you want to know which images work better for your listings, brands enrolled in Brand Registry can A/B test images with Amazon's Manage Your Experiments tool rather than guessing.

Shopify Product Image Best Practices

Shopify does not have a main-image rulebook. Your theme decides how images are displayed, and you decide what they look like. The Shopify Help Center's product media page sets the technical limits:

Image Specifications

• Maximum size: up to 5000 x 5000 px, or 25 megapixels.
• File size: smaller than 20 MB.
• Square images: 2048 x 2048 px usually displays best.
• Format: PNG is listed as the best file type for most product images, followed by JPEG. WebP, HEIC, GIF, and others are also accepted.
• Aspect ratio: use a consistent ratio for featured images so they display at the same size on collection pages.

Design Tips for Shopify

• Set a house style before you shoot: aspect ratio, background, framing, and camera angle, applied to every product.
• Assign variant images so a shopper who picks a color sees that color. Photograph each variant rather than recoloring one photo.
• Include close-ups for shoppers who zoom or swipe through the gallery.
• Write alt text and rename files. Google's image SEO guidance recommends short, descriptive filenames and calls alt text the most important attribute for image metadata. Describe what the image shows, not a list of keywords.

Etsy Product Image Guidelines

Etsy buyers are usually looking for handmade, vintage, or made-to-order items and read photos for evidence of craft. According to Etsy's image requirements and best practices:

• Etsy recommends photos at least 2000 pixels in width and height, and the first photo at least 635 pixels in each direction.
• Accepted types are .jpg, .gif, .png, .svg, and .heic. Transparent PNGs are not supported, and transparent areas appear black.
• The first photo should be landscape or square. Etsy crops it into different thumbnail shapes, so keep the item centered with space around it.
• Listings can have up to 20 photos and 2 short videos.

Etsy has no white-background rule. A consistent, softly styled look often suits handmade shops better, with real close-ups, scale, and process photos in the rest of the gallery. Our Etsy product photography guide goes into more detail.

One Photo Set for All Three

If you sell in more than one place, shoot once and export several versions:

1. Shoot every product in the same setup: same light, same distance, product position marked on the table.
2. Capture front, back, side, detail, scale, and in-the-box shots.
3. Make one pure white main image that meets Amazon's rules. Crop a square version for Shopify at a consistent margin, and check the Etsy first-photo crop.
4. Add lifestyle scenes for secondary images on all three.
5. Export at a size that meets all three platforms' limits, in sRGB.

Common Mistakes

1. Low resolution: images too small to zoom on Amazon or too soft on large screens.
2. Inconsistent backgrounds: white on one listing, a desk on another, three shades of white across a collection.
3. Poor lighting: yellow room light, deep shadows, or blown-out highlights.
4. Missing angles: one view of a product the buyer cannot handle.
5. Supplier or stock photos that do not match the item you ship.
6. Not checking on a phone. Many shoppers browse on phones, so look at every main image at thumbnail size on a small screen before publishing.

Producing the Images with Studio Zero

Studio Zero is a phone app that turns your product photos into the image types above:

• Studio Mode for clean white or plain backgrounds. Check the result against Amazon's rules: pure white corners and the product filling the frame.
• Concept Mode for lifestyle scenes on Shopify, Etsy, and Amazon secondary images.
• Fashion Mode for clothing and accessories, including on-model shots.

Shoot the detail, scale, and in-the-box photos yourself, and compare every generated image with the product before you upload.