Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Vinted, Depop and their competitors all pull in two directions at once. They want images large enough to support a zoom feature, because buyers who zoom return items less often — and they want the upload to be small so their own pages stay fast. Your job is to land in the window between the two.
The two limits every marketplace has
- A minimum resolution — usually expressed as pixels on the shortest side. Below it, the zoom feature is simply disabled for your listing.
- A maximum file size — a hard cap per image, sometimes per listing. Go over it and the upload fails outright.
The exact numbers differ by platform and they change over time, so check the current help page for whichever site you are selling on before you batch-process a whole catalogue. The workflow below works for any of them.
Shoot or export at the right size first
Most people start with a 12-megapixel phone photo — roughly 4000 pixels wide — and then fight the file size down afterwards. That is backwards. A listing image only ever needs to look good at the largest size the marketplace will display it, and that is generally somewhere around 1500–2000 pixels on the long edge.
So do this:
- Open the original photo.
- Resize it long edge to about 1600–2000 pixels, keeping the proportions.
- Compress the resized image at a normal quality setting — around 75–80 for a photo.
- Check the resulting file size. If it is still above the marketplace cap, go to the target size tool and set the exact limit instead of guessing.
For a square-format listing — which several platforms prefer — crop to 1:1 first so the product is centred at the same scale across every photo, then resize and compress. Consistent framing is a bigger conversion factor than any compression setting.
Keep the background clean and use JPG or WebP
Product photos on a plain background compress far better than busy scenes, because there is less detail to encode. If you are photographing on a kitchen table, the wood grain is costing you hundreds of kilobytes for no selling benefit.
Use JPEG for anything you may also upload to a system that does not accept WebP, and WebP when the marketplace accepts it — same visible quality, smaller file. Reserve PNG for graphics with transparency, such as a logo overlay or a cut-out product on a transparent background.
A word on upscaling
If your photo is smaller than the marketplace minimum, do not scale it up to reach the number. Enlarging invents pixels and produces a soft image that looks worse than the smaller original, and it makes the file larger at the same time. Reshoot or export again from the original at a higher resolution.
Processing a whole catalogue
Listing 40 products means 200 or more images. Doing that one at a time through a web tool is slow, so use the batch compressor: set a maximum width and a quality level, drop in the folder, and download everything as a single ZIP. The settings apply uniformly, which is exactly what you want for a consistent shop appearance.
Frequently asked questions
Why was my listing image rejected for being too large?
Almost always because the file is over the marketplace's per-image cap, not because of the pixel dimensions. Use the target size tool to bring it under the limit while keeping the resolution.
What is a good image size for product listings?
Around 1600–2000 pixels on the long edge covers the zoom features of most platforms while keeping the file manageable. Square crops at that size are a safe universal choice.
Do marketplaces recompress my images?
Yes, nearly all of them do, and they also generate their own thumbnails. Uploading a clean, correctly sized file gives their pipeline better material to work with than an oversized or over-compressed one.
Should I remove the background?
For a clean catalogue look, yes — a cut-out on white or transparent background both compresses better and reads better in search results. Keep PNG or WebP if the background must be transparent.
Can I use the same images on my own shop website?
Yes, and you should: the same rule applies there. Keep a folder of correctly sized, compressed masters so you can upload to a new channel without reprocessing everything.
Related: Crop Image · Resize Image · Compress to a target size · Batch compress