Taking Pictures For Amazon Product Pages

When you create a new product page on Amazon – or list products anywhere such as eBay or Etsy… you need good pictures. I’m not a photographer… at all – so this is a challenge.

I needed a white background per Amazon’s terms. As I’ve said before – this is violated all the time, but we should strive to follow the rules.

I purchased a roll of white poster paper (I call it butcher paper) and this makes a fantastic background for product pictures. And it’s cheap – I’m all about doing the “poor man’s” version of anything.

This is from Amazon about Product Image Size:

Images submitted to Amazon must have pixel dimensions of at least 1000 or larger in either height or width.

Most image editing programs include a function that indicates the pixel dimensions.  If you do not have an image editing program but the image will display in a browser, you may be able to right-click on it (for windows users) and view the image properties, which will indicate the pixel dimensions.

Image editing programs often allow you to change pixel dimensions.  Resizing small images to be larger usually reduces image quality, sometimes significantly.  Any images that are blurry or pixilated from upsizing or recompression damage may not be posted to the site.

Also from Amazon – Picture’s on White Background:

Product images
When was the last time you bought a product without seeing a picture? To create the best buying experience for our customers we require all product images to be on pure white background without text or watermarks. Show the entire product and have it take up as much of the image as possible. The images should be at least 500×500 pixels. However, for your products to be viewed in detail we recommend you use images at least 1000×1000 pixels.

I take my pictures for products outside so I get a nice wash of light and I don’t have to worry about lighting.  Daylight is free!

I keep a pack of these sticky dot’s on hand to help me stack stuff and have it stay in place. These sticky dot’s are usually available in scrapbook supply areas… I got these at the dollar store.

This is the picture I shot for my Tinker Bell Birthday Supplies

I cleaned up the picture a bit – brightened – crop – contrast etc. I used Microsoft Office Picture Manager – free with my computer.

This is not the very best picture in the world – I get that.  But it’s far better than this picture and follows the Amazon rules:

Pictures Sell! You know this if you have been selling on eBay. Shoppers on Amazon are looking for things that are “not junk” – take the very best picture you can.

Remember to label your pictures with “keywords”.  I used Tinker Bell Party Supplies and variations for my pictures. This is just one thing that the search engines look for – picture titles. I don’t know if it helps with Amazon Search Engine Optimization – but it can’t hurt!

This is Amazon’s File Types Accepted:

Amazon accepts four types of files for product images; TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group), GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) and PNG (Portable Network Graphics).

Amazon applies additional compression to images when displaying them on its website. For best results, images should be submitted to Amazon with minimal or no compression. For JPEG images, save at the highest possible quality level, and avoid resaving the image in JPEG format while editing the image. For TIFF files, do not apply any file compression.

Remove layers from all images before submitting.

Amazon does not accept images submitted in the following formats: EPS (Encapsulated Postscript File), BMP (Windows Bitmap), or PDF (Portable Document Format). Files proprietary to a specific software application are also not accepted, including .PSD (Native Photoshop Files), .IA (Adobe Illustrator), .ART (America Online), .CDR (CorelDRAW), .CPT (Corel Paint), .FH (Macromedia Freehand), .FLA (Flash), .PICT (MAC OSX default), .PSP (Paint Shop Pro) and .DOC (Microsoft Word).

I will be sharing “how to set up a product page” on Amazon next… stay tuned!