Product photography for online shops: what makes an image sell
Most advice about product photography is taste dressed as expertise: "keep it clean", "look professional". You cannot work with that. Four properties, however, are MEASURABLE, and those four decide whether your images earn their place. This article gives you the thresholds our own audit scores against, and tells you which of them a phone can already meet.
The four measurable properties
When we look at a shop's images we do not ask whether they are pretty. We measure four things on every photo, and the score is built from them:
| Property | What is measured | Weight in the score |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | the shorter side of the image, in pixels | 25% |
| Background | how uniform the corners of the frame are | 30% |
| Composition | how much of the frame the product fills, and whether it bleeds off | 20% |
| Consistency | whether the catalogue's images resemble each other | 25% |
Background carries the most weight because it is what most shops get wrong, and because it is the fastest tell that a photo was taken on a kitchen table. Consistency matters as much as resolution because a buyer never sees one image; they see a grid.
Resolution: the 1400 pixel line
The working threshold: the shorter side should be at least 1400 pixels. Below that, marketplaces and ad platforms soften the image on zoom, and the mobile buyer loses exactly the detail that would have convinced them.
A shorter side under 500 pixels is effectively unusable today, and scores zero on this axis with us. In older catalogues this is the single most common defect, because the images were cropped to a template from years ago and nobody has touched them since.
A ten-second check: open a product page, right-click the main image and look at its dimensions. If the smaller number is under 1000, you have found something worth fixing this week.
Background: uniform matters, white does not
A widespread misconception says product photography requires a white background. It does not. It requires a background that is uniform and deliberate. Marble, a wooden board or coloured card all work, as long as it is the same one every time and the corner of a cupboard is not creeping into frame.
What we measure is how much the four corners of the image differ from one another. If the top left is a worktop and the bottom right is a tablecloth, the photo falls apart, and your eye already knows it even if you cannot name it.
White does have one real advantage: several marketplaces, Amazon among them, require it on the main image in many categories. There, white is not a style choice but an entry requirement.
Composition: the 30 to 78 per cent band
A product sits well in the frame when it fills between 30 and 78 per cent of the image. The two extremes are two different mistakes:
- Below 30 per cent the product is a speck on an empty canvas. In a grid, at thumbnail size, the buyer cannot tell what they are looking at.
- Above 78 per cent the product presses against the edges. Marketplaces crop it, and ad formats with a different aspect ratio cut into the product itself.
There is a separate penalty when the product touches the edge of the frame. That is the fault that looks fine on your own shop and then slices the product in half in a square ad crop.
Consistency: the catalogue, not the photo
This is the axis most shops skip, and it is the first thing a buyer sees. A category page shows twenty images side by side. If each was shot on a different surface, in a different light, at a different aspect ratio, the page reads as noise and the shop reads as cheaper than it is.
We measure two things: whether the aspect ratios agree, and whether the backgrounds belong to one family. In our experience this is where small and handmade shops score worst, because each product was photographed the day it was finished, wherever there was room.
The good news: this is also the cheapest defect to repair. You do not need to reshoot the catalogue. A consistent background and aspect ratio built from the existing photographs lifts the whole grid at once.
What a phone can do
Three of the four. A current phone has resolution to spare, composition is your decision, and consistency is nothing but discipline. What a phone finds hard is light.
- Shoot beside a window, not facing it. Soft daylight from the side is the best free studio lamp there is. Avoid harsh midday sun, which casts hard shadows.
- Pick one background and keep it. A large sheet of paper, a wooden board, a stone tile. The same one for every product, including the one you shoot three weeks later.
- Keep the same distance and height. If you have a tripod, mark its place on the floor. This is the consistency people pay for.
- Do not zoom. Digital zoom throws away resolution. Step closer instead.
- Turn the flash off. A built-in flash flattens the product and burns a white patch onto the packaging, usually across the label.
- Take more frames than you need. Five shots per product costs two minutes; going back to reshoot costs an afternoon.
What advertising asks for separately
An image that works in your shop is often unusable in an ad. On Meta and Google placements the 4:5 and 9:16 portrait formats occupy the most screen on a phone. If your catalogue is all landscape, the ad either crops the product or pillarboxes it into a small strip.
So decide at the moment of shooting whether the frame can survive a portrait crop: is there room above and below the product? That is one second while you are there, and a reshoot afterwards.
Questions people actually ask
Is a phone enough, or do I need a camera?
A current phone meets three of the four measurable properties. The difference shows in the hard cases: glossy, glass or metal surfaces, and very dark products against light backgrounds.
How many images does a product need?
Marketplaces typically expect at least three: a main image, a scale or detail shot, and one in use. The main image does the selling; the rest answer doubts.
Do background-removal apps solve this?
They solve the background, not the resolution or the composition. And they carry a trap: a rough cut-out leaves a faint white fringe around the product, which reads as cheap in a grid.
What happens to the label when AI makes the image?
This is the important question, and where most tools fail: generators tend to rewrite the text on packaging, which no shop can accept. Every image we produce goes through a check, and if the lettering has changed the image is not delivered, it is remade.
Can I see where my shop stands?
Yes, free and without signing up: enter your shop address on the product photo page and you get the score on all four axes plus your weakest images, named.
Start by measuring
A free photo audit of your own shop, and a free first image so you can judge the result on your own product.
Updated 14 August 2026. The thresholds are the working values of our own audit engine, not general recommendations. Service provided by Balog Péter e.v. (HU91829768), Hungary.