What’s the best resolution for product photography? A guide for online retailers

With Omi, your product images will always be razor-sharp, even if they’re the size of a bus.

What are the recommended product photo resolutions for top eCommerce platforms? 

If you’re using a third party platform to sell products online, your host platform almost certainly has its own image guidelines. Here are some of the most popular ones.

Bear in mind that the following information is strictly for product photos — which we’re defining as the main image(s) of products on their PDPs. You will need to consider different image sizes for other contexts, including things like hero images, ads, logos, thumbnails, and favicons. 

1. Shopify

Shopify recommends square product images for PDPs, since they are easier to reposition on smaller screens — after all, 75% of all eCommerce sales take place on mobile. You can also add product videos (of up to 10 minutes, 1GB, 4096 x 2160 px and in file types mp4, mov, or webm.) 

• Recommended size for product images: 2048 x 2048 px

• Maximum image size: 5000 x 5000 px 

• Minimum for users to be able to zoom: 800 x 800 px

• Other specifications: max file size 20 MB, but recommends to keep product photos to around 300KB. They advise a file format of PNG or JPEG.

Endro Cosmétics uses Omi to create square-format images for their Shopify store.

2. Amazon

Every product listed on Amazon must have at least one image, but you can display up to seven. The first one is known as the “main image” and is the one which appears in search results.

Amazon has stricter requirements for the main image to maintain consistency on its search pages — it must have a pure white background (not off-white), and show the product as at least 85% of the image. 

• Recommended size for product images: at least 1000 x 1000 px (unofficial sources say 2000 x 2000 px is ideal) 

• Maximum image size: 10,000 x 10,000 px 

• Minimum for users to be able to zoom: 1000 px on one side 

• Other specifications: the platform accepts JPEG, TIFF, PNG or non-animated GIFs, but use JPEGs to maximize your Amazon conversion rates

My Variations uses Omi to create clear yet enticing images for their Amazon listings.

3. eBay

Ebay allows you to add up to 24 images for every product, but the very first picture you add — called the “main photo” — is the one which appears in search results. Since this platform is traditionally for hobbyists rather than eCommerce retailers, they’re more lenient than Amazon about the main photo’s background, but they do advise a neutral space free from clutter. 

• Recommended size for product images: 1600 x 1600 px 

• Maximum image size: 9000 x 9000 px 

• Minimum for users to be able to zoom: 800 px on one side 

• Other specifications: max file size 12MB, they say that aspect rations of 1:1 or 16:9 look best in their search results

4. Etsy

Listing images on Etsy should be horizontal or square — bear in mind that they will be cropped to an aspect ratio of 4:3 when they appear as a thumbnail in search. Images that are dark, low resolution (under 635px) or part of a photocollage may appear lower down in search results. You can upload up to 10 images per listing, and one of them could be a video. 

Videos must be under 100MB and have an aspect ratio of 2:1 or 1:2. The suggested resolution is at least 1080pxm and most major file formats are accepted, including MP4, MOV, and MPEG. 

• Recommended size for product images: 2000 x 2000 px  

• Maximum image size: 10MB 

• Minimum for users to be able to zoom: 1000 px on one side 

• Other specifications: images larger than 1MB in file size may not finish uploading. If you’re using the Etsy Seller app, there’s a native editor you can use for image post-production. 

5. WooCommerce 

Unlike other platforms, WooCommerce will resize your images for you. In your Storefront, the largest single product image is 800×800 pixels — if you upload an image bigger than that, it’ll be reduced automatically to this size. The same goes for uploading product thumbnails and catalog images. 

• Recommended size for product images: 800 x 800 px 

• Maximum image size: not given 

• Minimum for users to be able to zoom: 2000px preferred according to unofficial sources 

• Other specifications: if you’re using a custom theme, you can set your own image dimensions 

In general, therefore, no platform is going to ask you for an image much bigger than 2048 px squared. Shooting product images at this size means you're covered for zoom, cropping, and high-DPI (dots per inch) displays. 

Wait, what is “resolution,” exactly? 

Perhaps you’ve got a vague idea that resolution is tied to blurriness, but don’t know exactly what the term means. Well, resolution refers to how much detail an image contains.

In an online context, it’s measured in pixels (px) — the small dots or squares that make up an image on a computer screen. The more pixels an image contains, the sharper it appears on a screen, and the larger you can make it without it blurring. 

Another way to discuss resolution is in dots per inch or DPI. A high resolution image — one with a lot of pixels — also has a high DPI. As a term, DPI is more commonly used for images to be printed. 

In a digital context, deciding on which resolution to go for means making a trade-off. The higher the resolution, the sharper your images appear to viewers. More detailed images look professional and offer more visual information for your customers. However, pictures with a large file size will load slowly — potentially causing users to bounce before they’ve even seen your product.

What’s the relationship between resolution and file size? 

Generally speaking, the higher resolution or pixel count of an image, the larger the file size will be. However, pixel count isn’t the only factor here. Different file types can also impact the size of an image file — modern formats like WebP and AVIF contain more information in a smaller file size. You can also compress images to make the file sizes smaller. 

What does “compressing an image” mean? 

Compressing an image is a technique to shrink its file size by abbreviating the information in the file. Just like journalists use shorthand to write a sentence in fewer characters, website owners can use compression to show the same image in less information. There are plenty of free online tools to compress image size automatically, without reducing the quality of the images’ appearance. 

What’s an “aspect ratio”? 

Aspect ratio describes the shape of an image. It’s the proportional relationship between an image’s width and height, expressed as a ratio. For example, an instagram story has an aspect ratio of 9:16, where a square product image on a PDP has an aspect ratio of of 1:1.

Various aspect ratios of the same image. Using Omi’s Virtual Studio you can easily export your image in any ratio without having to organize a new photoshoot.

Why Virtual Product Photography is the perfect choice for images of any resolution 

If you want flexibility over the resolution of your product images, Virtual Product Photography is a game-changer. 

Let’s say that one of your products becomes a surprise best-seller, and you want to use an image of it as the homepage background — which means using an image of it that’s 3000 px across. If you’re using traditional product photography, and you only had a 2000px product shot of this image on its PDP, that would be impossible. Your only option would be to call up the product photographer for a re-shoot! 

However, if you’re using a virtual product photo tool like Omi, you can create a new image of the perfect size in a few clicks. There won’t be any pixellation or loss of quality, since our Virtual Photo Studio works by using a 3D model of your product — you’re not cropping or compressing a physical photo, but creating a new one with the same lighting, background, and prop settings. With Omi, your product images are future-proofed, whatever you decide to do with them.

Virtual Photography makes it easy to adapt any 3D scene for any platform. This helps you scale your campaigns and get more ROI out of your investment in product photography.

If you get an Omi print add-on, you can even create or resize your virtual product photos to scale appropriate for print media. Think: brochures, postcards — even billboards, all perfectly crisp.

Fauchon uses Omi for print in magazines and catalogs (and even physical banners around Paris).

A brief afterword

Though it might seem like a small detail, the resolution for your product images is related to your conversion metrics. Use images that are too small, and your customers won’t have enough visual information to make buying decisions; use ones that are too big, and customers will bounce before your image loads. 

Whilst 2000 x 2000 px is generally considered the goldilocks spot for a main product image, you’ll need to resize and crop your product images many times for different use cases. 

For flexibility over the resolution of your product visuals, use a Virtual Product Photography tool like Omi. It gives you full control over the size and shape of your product images, so you can create them to any scale you need. Not to mention, edit existing images for multiple sales channels without re-doing creative work from scratch. This not only keeps your marketing initiatives agile — it ensures your images always look razor sharp, no matter where they appear.