When you sell a physical product, the photo is a picture of the thing. When you sell a digital product, there is no thing to photograph. The listing image is the product, at least until the buyer clicks download. A printable, a Notion template, an ebook or a course has no weight, no texture and no packaging, so every scrap of perceived value has to be carried by the images you upload.
That makes digital sellers uniquely exposed. Get the mockups wrong and the file inside might be excellent while the listing converts at a fraction of its potential. Get the pixel dimensions wrong and you either upload a 40 MB print file that the platform rejects, or a 900 px mockup that looks soft next to competitors.
This guide covers the image specs for the platforms digital sellers actually use in 2026, the print-resolution maths behind printables, and the mockup sequence that answers buyer objections before they are raised.
Platform image specs at a glance
These are the listing or storefront image requirements, not the specs of the files your buyer downloads. Confusing the two is the single most common mistake in this category.
| Platform | Recommended size | Ratio / crop | Formats | Max file size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy listing photos | 2000 px on the shortest side (up to ~3000 px) | Displayed in a 4:3 frame; square uploads are letterboxed, not cropped | JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, HEIC | 20 MB per image |
| Gumroad cover | 1280 x 720 px | 16:9 | JPG, PNG | Keep under ~5 MB |
| Gumroad thumbnail | 600 x 600 px minimum | 1:1 (separate asset from the cover) | JPG, PNG | Keep under ~5 MB |
| Amazon KDP ebook cover | 1600 x 2560 px ideal (min 625 x 1000) | 1.6:1 height to width | JPG, TIFF (RGB only) | 50 MB |
| Udemy course image | 750 x 422 px minimum | 16:9 | JPG, PNG | Around 2 MB |
| Teachable course thumbnail | 1024 x 576 px | 16:9 | JPG, PNG | Keep under ~5 MB |
| Creative Market screenshots | 1820 x 1214 px recommended (min 910 x 607) | 3:2, max 3640 x 10920 px | JPG, PNG | 5 MB |
The Etsy detail that trips everyone up
Etsy displays listing photos in a 4:3 frame but does not crop square uploads — it letterboxes them with white bars. That makes 1:1 the safest ratio for the first photo if your mockup has text near the edges, because nothing gets cut. If you want the image to fill the frame edge to edge, upload at 4:3 (for example 3000 x 2250 px) and design to that shape deliberately.
Etsy also recommends the first photo be at least 635 px wide as an absolute floor, but that number is a legacy minimum, not a target. Upload 2000 px or more and let Etsy generate the smaller derivatives.
Printables: pixel dimensions, not DPI
The most persistent myth in the printables market is that "300 DPI" is a property you can set on a file. DPI is only a tag telling a printer how densely to lay down the pixels. What actually determines print quality is the pixel count. A file labelled 300 DPI at 500 x 700 px will print terribly at A4.
Work out the pixel dimensions your buyer needs, then build to them:
| Print size | Pixels at 300 DPI | Ratio family |
|---|---|---|
| A4 (210 x 297 mm) | 2480 x 3508 | A-series |
| 5 x 7 in | 1500 x 2100 | 5:7 |
| 8 x 10 in | 2400 x 3000 | 4:5 |
| 11 x 14 in | 3300 x 4200 | 11:14 |
| 16 x 20 in | 4800 x 6000 | 4:5 |
| 18 x 24 in | 5400 x 7200 | 3:4 |
| 24 x 36 in | 7200 x 10800 | 2:3 |
Two ratio families cover most wall-art demand. The 2:3 family (4x6, 6x9, 8x12, 12x18, 16x24, 20x30, 24x36) and the 4:5 family (8x10, 16x20). Design your artwork once at the largest size in a family and every smaller size in that family scales down cleanly with no recomposition.
Never upload the print file as the listing photo. A 7200 x 10800 px PNG is far past Etsy's 20 MB ceiling and will simply fail. Export a separate 2000 px JPG for the listing and keep the print master in your delivery folder.
The mockup sequence that sells
A digital listing has to do the job a physical product does by existing. Buyers cannot hold it, so the images have to pre-empt every question. Fill every available slot, and give each image a job:
- Hero mockup. The product in a realistic setting — art framed on a wall, a planner open on a desk, a template on a laptop screen. This is the thumbnail, so it must read at 250 px on a phone.
- Close-up detail. Prove the quality. Crop into typography, texture or a single spread so the buyer sees it is not a low-effort AI render.
- Second context shot. A different room, colour scheme or device. Helps buyers picture it in their own life.
- What's included graphic. A plain list: file formats, number of pages, sizes supplied, editable or not. This kills the most common pre-purchase question.
- Sizes supplied graphic. For printables, show the ratio families and print sizes covered.
- How it works. Three steps: buy, download, print or duplicate. Digital delivery still confuses first-time buyers.
- Full contents overview. A grid of every page or variant so the buyer sees exactly what they get.
- Trust or usage shot. Terms of use, personal-use licence, or a review screenshot where the platform allows it.
Text overlays have to survive the thumbnail
Most digital-product images lean on text, and most of that text is unreadable at the size it is first seen. Grid thumbnails on mobile are often rendered around 250 to 350 px wide. If your caption is 24 px in a 2000 px image, it collapses to roughly 3 px on that phone. As a rule of thumb, body text on a listing image should be at least 4 per cent of the image height, headings closer to 8 per cent. Check by exporting a 300 px copy and looking at it on your phone.
Ebook covers and course images
Kindle covers are judged almost entirely as thumbnails in search results, so the title needs to be legible at postage-stamp size. KDP's ideal upload is 1600 x 2560 px in RGB, under 50 MB, as JPG or TIFF. If your cover has a white or very light background, add a narrow 3 to 4 px medium-grey border — otherwise the cover dissolves into Amazon's white page background and looks like a broken image.
Course platforms are stricter about content than dimensions. Udemy wants 750 x 422 px at minimum in 16:9, and rejects images carrying promotional text, pricing, URLs, discount badges or platform logos. Teachable is more permissive but 1024 x 576 px at 16:9 is the sensible target. In both cases the image is displayed small in a catalogue grid, so a face or single strong object beats a busy collage.
A workflow that does not eat your week
Digital sellers typically maintain far more image variants per product than physical sellers do — a 1:1 Etsy hero, a 4:3 secondary set, a 16:9 Gumroad cover, a 600 px thumbnail, a Pinterest vertical, plus the print masters. Doing that by hand in an editor for every new product is where the hours disappear.
Build the artwork once at the largest size you will ever need, then batch the derivatives. A tool like PixelPrep will take a folder of masters and output correctly sized, correctly padded versions for each platform in one pass, which keeps your Etsy hero, your Gumroad cover and your Pinterest pin visually identical rather than three slightly different crops made on three different days.
Pre-upload checklist
- Listing images exported separately from delivery files — never upload the print master
- Etsy hero at 2000 px or more, square if text sits near the edges
- Gumroad cover at 1280 x 720 and thumbnail at 600 x 600 treated as two assets
- KDP cover at 1600 x 2560, RGB, with a grey edge if the background is light
- Course images 16:9, no pricing, badges or URLs baked in
- Every text overlay checked at 300 px on a phone
- A "what's included" graphic and a "sizes supplied" graphic in every listing
- Print files built to real pixel counts, not a DPI tag
- All slots filled, each image doing a different job
Digital products live or die on perceived value, and perceived value is manufactured entirely in the image set. Spend the afternoon building a reusable mockup template and a correctly sized export routine once, and every product you launch afterwards inherits it.