Marketplace Product Photos

Pure white is a specific number, not a colour

Amazon's main-image rule is RGB 255,255,255 exactly. A backdrop that photographs as white almost never is — studio white typically lands somewhere around 240-250 per channel, which looks white next to a product and reads as light grey against the marketplace's own page background. The seam where your image ends becomes visible, and that is what a reviewer notices.

This is why compositing the cut-out onto a generated white canvas beats trying to shoot a perfect white background. The canvas is 255 by construction, and the only thing that has to be right is the edge of the cut-out.

The 85% frame rule that quietly fails listings

Amazon expects the product to occupy roughly 85% of the image frame. A cut-out dropped onto a large square with comfortable margins satisfies every colour requirement and still fails this one, because the product ends up filling perhaps half the frame.

Crop after removing the background, not before. Removing first gives you a known product boundary, so the crop can be computed from the subject's actual bounding box with a fixed margin, rather than guessed from the original photo where the product sits wherever the photographer put it.

Sizes worth exporting

Marketplaces differ less than their documentation suggests, and the practical answer is to export large and square.

• Amazon: 2000x2000 px enables the zoom viewer; 1600 px is the minimum for it.
• Etsy: 2000x2000 px, though it displays at a 4:3 crop, so keep the product centred.
• Shopify: 2048x2048 px is the theme-friendly default.
• Keep a transparent PNG master as well — resizing from a cut-out is free, re-cutting is not.

Shadows: keep, fake, or drop

Background removal takes the original contact shadow with it, and a product floating with no shadow looks pasted on. Marketplaces vary on whether that matters: Amazon permits a shadow on the main image but forbids props and text, while a plain cut-out is always safe.

For a consistent catalogue the reliable choice is no shadow at all on the primary image, and a shadow only on secondary lifestyle shots. Inconsistent fake shadows across a catalogue look worse than none, because the eye reads the grid as a set and picks out the odd one immediately.