Most brands discover the spec sheet after the shoot. The images come back beautiful, the marketplace rejects half of them for having a background that is very nearly white, and someone spends a fortnight recropping files that should have been right on the day.
The requirements are not actually in conflict. They differ in the details, but there is one master file that satisfies all of them, and knowing what it is before the camera comes out saves the reshoot.
The one master file
Shoot square, large, and on a genuinely white background. Everything else is a crop or an export away.
| Property | Master file | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Aspect ratio | 1:1 square | Marketplaces expect it, and square crops to 4:5 and 16:9 without losing the product. |
| Resolution | 3000 by 3000 pixels | Above every platform minimum, and gives room to crop in for detail frames. |
| Background | Pure white, 255 255 255 | Near white reads as grey against a white page and gets rejected by marketplace checks. |
| Product fill | About 85 percent of the frame | The marketplace convention, and it stops products looking different sizes in a grid. |
| Format | JPEG for delivery, TIFF or PSD retained | JPEG for the storefront, layered master kept for future recrops. |
| Colour profile | sRGB | What browsers assume. Anything else shifts on screen. |
The fill percentage is the one people skip, and it is the one that makes a category page look professional. If every product occupies roughly the same proportion of its frame, the grid reads as a single range. If it does not, the page looks like stock photography from three suppliers.
Where the platforms actually differ
Once the master exists, the platform requirements are mostly export settings rather than shooting decisions.
| Platform | What it insists on | Practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Pure white main image, product at about 85 percent of frame, no logos, watermarks or props in the main shot | The main image is policed. Secondary images are far more permissive, so that is where lifestyle and scale shots go. |
| Google Shopping | No promotional text or watermarks overlaid on the image, accurate representation of the product | Overlaid badges such as sale flashes are the most common cause of disapproval. |
| Shopify | No hard requirement, theme dependent | Themes crop to their own ratio. A square master survives every theme; a landscape one gets cut. |
The pattern is consistent: the marketplaces are strict about the main image and relaxed about the rest, and your own storefront is relaxed about everything and will quietly crop whatever you give it. Shoot for the strictest and the rest follow.
Shoot once, crop many
The reason to frame slightly wider than you need is that cropping down is free and cropping up does not exist. From one square master you can pull:
- The 1:1 marketplace and grid image
- A 4:5 vertical for the product page and for Instagram
- A 9:16 crop for stories and short form video stills
- A tight detail crop for fabric, hardware or finish
That only works if the product sits with breathing room in the master. Frame it edge to edge and every derivative crop cuts into the product itself.
File size and page speed
Product imagery is usually the largest element on a product page, which makes it the thing that determines Largest Contentful Paint. The image that loads first should be compressed and correctly sized rather than the 3000 pixel master scaled down by the browser.
- Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG fallback
- Size the delivered file to the largest size it will actually display at
- Let the first product image load eagerly and lazy load the rest
- Keep the master, deliver the derivative
Alt text, and why it is not a keyword field
Alt text describes the image for someone who cannot see it. It also happens to be one of the few things telling a search engine what a photograph contains, which is why Google's own image guidance asks for descriptive text rather than keyword lists.
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| image1.jpg, no alt | Navy merino crew neck jumper, front view on white |
| womens jumper london buy online | Womens navy wool jumper, ribbed cuffs, shown flat |
| product photo | Ghost mannequin shot of a white cotton shirt showing collar and placket |
Naming the file properly costs nothing at export time and is one more signal. navy-merino-crew-neck-front.jpg tells both a person and a crawler more than IMG_4471.jpg does.
The checklist to send your photographer
- Square, 3000 by 3000, sRGB, pure white for the main frames
- Product filling about 85 percent, with room to crop
- One main frame, plus back, side, detail and scale per product
- Consistent crop and camera height across the whole range
- Layered masters retained, JPEG or WebP delivered
- Files named descriptively rather than by camera number
If you are briefing a shoot rather than shooting it, this list is the entire brief for the technical half. The other half is the shot list, which is a separate problem.
Sources
The Motherlight team
Written from the studio floor at Holborn Studios in Shoreditch, where we shoot ecommerce, campaign and product work for fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands.
Keep reading
How to build a shot list
The other half of the brief: what to shoot, in what order, and how many frames per piece.
Ecommerce photography in London
How a full catalogue day runs at the studio in Shoreditch.
Ghost mannequin photography
When invisible mannequin imagery beats a flat lay, and how it is shot.