Glossary · Image standards
Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is the proportion of an image's width to its height, written as 1:1 for square or 4:5 for portrait, and it decides how a photo is cropped in grids and thumbnails.
Aspect ratio is written as width to height. A 2,000 x 2,000 px image is 1:1; a 1,600 x 2,000 px image is 4:5. Two images with different pixel sizes can share a ratio, and two with the same width can have very different shapes.
Each platform has its own preference. TikTok Shop allows up to 9 square (1:1) images of at least 600 x 600 px. Walmart asks for 1:1. Shopify says 2,048 x 2,048 "usually displays best" for square images and recommends keeping one aspect ratio per collection. Etsy lets sellers crop to any aspect ratio, but asks for the first photo to be horizontal or square, with later photos matching, and warns that thumbnails crop to square, portrait or landscape, so shoot wider and centre the subject. Amazon A+ banners are wide: 970 x 300 px for Basic and 1464 x 600 px for Premium.
The common mistakes are mixing and stretching. Mixing portrait and square images in a Shopify collection gives a ragged grid. Stretching an image to a new ratio distorts the product, which TikTok Shop's AIGC rules treat as changing its shape. Letterboxing with coloured bars breaks white-background rules. On Etsy, placing the product near an edge means the thumbnail crop cuts it off.
The safe approach is to shoot with room around the product and crop to each platform's ratio from the original, rather than converting one export into another.
PicBarn's per-platform exports set the canvas for each marketplace, so a square TikTok Shop image and a wider Etsy image come from the same source photo.
See also
- 85% frame fill85% frame fill is Amazon's main-image rule that the product should take up 85% of the image frame, so it reads clearly as a thumbnail while still being shown whole.
- Zoom threshold (1,000 px)The zoom threshold is the image size at which a marketplace lets shoppers magnify a product photo; on Amazon, images 1,000 px or larger on the longest side enable zoom.
- DPI vs pixelsDPI is a print setting that says how densely dots are placed on paper, while pixel dimensions are the actual size of a digital image; marketplaces judge product photos by pixels, not DPI.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Aspect ratio (image)
- TikTok Shop Seller University: Product Listing Policy
- Walmart Marketplace Learn: Product detail page image guidelines and requirements
- Shopify Help Center: Product media types
- Etsy Help: Listing photos
- Etsy Help: How to create a listing
- Amazon Seller Central: A+ Content guidelines
Related
- Shopify product image sizes and how to export every one from a single photoShopify’s official limits (5,000 × 5,000 px, 25 MP, 20 MB), the 2,048 × 2,048 size that displays best, how the CDN serves every other size from one master, and how to get the Amazon, TikTok Shop and Etsy sizes from the same photo.
- Etsy listing photo requirements: sizes, formats, the unedited-photo rule, and how to export them from one photoEtsy’s photo rules from its own help pages: 2,000 px recommended, 635 px floor for the first photo, 20 photos and 2 videos per listing, jpg/png/gif/svg/heic, the new rule that most listings need one unedited real photo, and what AI edits are allowed.
- TikTok Shop product image requirements (1:1 and 3:4) and how to meet themTikTok Shop’s image rules from its own seller pages: square 1:1, at least 600 × 600 px, up to nine images, a front-view main image on pure white with no text or renderings, what the 3:4 tolerance really means, the AI-image rules, and a pre-upload routine.