Most sellers think of product photos as something shoppers judge. They are, but long before a shopper sees them, a machine has already graded them. Amazon, Shopee, Lazada, eBay and Google all run automated checks on your images, and each one turns those checks into something that affects you commercially: a suppressed listing, a lower content score, a "needs improvement" flag, or a disapproved shopping ad.
The frustrating part is that these graders are mostly invisible. Nobody emails you to say "your third image is 640 px and that is why your zoom is off". You just quietly get fewer impressions. This guide explains what each platform actually measures, where to find the report, and the handful of image fixes that lift every score at once.
Three different kinds of grading
It helps to separate what these systems actually do, because sellers often lump them together and then chase the wrong fix.
1. Hard gates
Pass or fail. Your image is below the minimum pixel dimensions, the background is not white where white is required, or there is text on the main image. The listing is rejected, suppressed, or the ad is disapproved. There is no partial credit.
2. Soft scores
A number or grade shown in your seller dashboard, built from completeness signals: how many images you uploaded, whether attributes are filled, whether the description is long enough. Images are one input among several. A higher score generally means more impressions.
3. Behavioural ranking
Not a score you can see at all. The platform watches click-through rate, dwell time and conversion on your listing and ranks accordingly. Better images move all three. This is the one that actually pays, and it is the reason a technically compliant photo can still be a bad photo.
What each channel measures
| Channel | What the grader is called | Minimum image | What it actually recommends | How images cost you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | Listing Quality Dashboard (Inventory > Improve Listing Quality) | 500 px on the longest side | 1,600 px or larger on the longest side; 2,000 x 2,000 px is a safe standard | Listing suppression; no zoom below 1,000 px |
| Shopee | Listing quality prompts and the Product AI Optimiser in Seller Centre | 500 x 500 px | 1,024 x 1,024 px or higher, square, under 2 MB | Weak cover image suppresses click-through in search |
| Lazada | Content Score (and the Honeycomb Score for overall listing health) | 330 x 330 px | 1,000 x 1,000 px or larger, white background, 5+ images | Low content score means fewer impressions |
| eBay | Listing Quality Report (Seller Hub > Performance) | 500 px on the longest side | 1,600 px on the longest side | Flagged as a single-photo or low-quality listing |
| Google Shopping | Product data quality and item disapprovals in Merchant Center | 100 x 100 px (250 x 250 px apparel), rising to 500 x 500 px on 31 January 2027 | 1,500 x 1,500 px or larger | Item disapproved, so the product simply stops showing |
Amazon: the dashboard tells you less than the suppression does
Amazon's Listing Quality Dashboard sits under Inventory > Improve Listing Quality and lists products with missing or weak attributes, sorted by page views and sales so your best sellers appear first. It is genuinely useful, but it skews towards attributes and text. Image problems tend to arrive separately, as suppression.
The main image rules that trigger suppression are strict and non-negotiable: a pure white background at RGB 255, 255, 255, the product occupying roughly 85% or more of the frame, no text, logos, watermarks or props, and no borders. Accessories shown in the photo that are not in the box are a common cause of takedowns.
On resolution, three thresholds matter and sellers routinely confuse them. 500 px on the longest side is the bare minimum Amazon will accept. 1,000 px on the longest side is where zoom on hover switches on. 1,600 px or more is what Amazon recommends for a sharp zoom experience. The ceiling is 10,000 px. Uploading at 2,000 x 2,000 px clears all three comfortably and still keeps file sizes sane.
The practical takeaway: an image can be fully compliant and still be leaving money on the table because it is 900 px and therefore has no zoom. Compliance and quality are separate bars.
Shopee: the cover image is the whole game
Shopee does not publish a single visible image score, but it behaves like one exists. Cover images must show the product cleanly with no watermarks, borders, added text, promotional badges or slogans layered on. The product should fill a healthy majority of the frame, generally cited as at least 60%, and Shopee Mall is stricter again, disallowing cluttered or shot-on-the-shelf backgrounds.
Two mechanical details catch people out. First, non-square images are auto-cropped to 1:1, so anything you upload in 4:3 or portrait will have its edges taken off by an algorithm that does not know where your product's important bits are. Prepare square. Second, the file size ceiling is 2 MB, and you can upload up to nine images per SKU including the cover.
Shopee has also been pushing its free Product AI Optimiser inside Seller Centre, which suggests better cover images and sharper titles. Treat it as a second opinion rather than a verdict, but it is free and it does surface obvious weak covers.
Lazada: content score is the one number to watch
Lazada is the most explicit of the Southeast Asian platforms. Each listing gets a Content Score based on the completeness and quality of your product information, with images, long description and key attributes all feeding in. Higher scores are rewarded with more impressions. The separate Honeycomb Score covers broader listing health.
The image side is straightforward: main image on a white background, at least 330 x 330 px as an absolute floor, product filling around 80% of the frame, and a minimum of three images with five or more recommended. In practice the 330 px floor is far too low for a modern phone screen; upload at 1,000 x 1,000 px or larger.
If your Lazada content score is stuck, the fastest wins are usually not photographic at all. Fill every attribute field, including the optional ones like material, warranty period and country of origin, then add the extra images. Attribute completeness is weighted heavily.
eBay: a report almost nobody downloads
eBay's Listing Quality Report lives under Seller Hub > Performance and is a downloadable spreadsheet covering your ten categories with the most live listings. It names specific problems: missing item specifics, listings with only one photo, weak titles and category mismatches.
Photo guidance is 500 px minimum on the longest side, 1,600 px recommended, white or plain background on the main shot, item filling the frame, no watermarks or text overlays. Because eBay carries a lot of used stock, additional photos serve a different job than on Amazon: show the labels, the serial, the wear, the scuffs. Honest defect photos reduce disputes far more than they reduce sales.
On quantity, more is not automatically better. Around eight to twelve purposeful photos tends to outperform twenty-plus, where extra near-identical angles just add scrolling.
Google Merchant Center: the strictest grader you are not watching
Google does not score your images so much as reject them. Image problems account for a very large share of Merchant Center disapprovals, and a disapproved item is invisible rather than merely demoted, which makes this the most expensive grader to ignore.
The headline change is the minimum, which rises to 500 x 500 px on 31 January 2027. If your feed still contains small supplier thumbnails, that deadline is a hard one. Google now recommends around 1,500 x 1,500 px to look right across every surface, including newer AI shopping placements.
There is also an automation worth knowing about. Under Products > Automations, automatic image improvements will attempt to strip detected text, watermarks, overlays and logos so the image passes review. It is off by default. Turn it on as a safety net, but do not treat it as a strategy: an algorithm cropping your promotional badge off is not the same as shooting a clean image.
The five fixes that lift every score at once
The good news is that these graders overlap heavily. You do not need five workflows.
- Shoot and archive one high-resolution master per angle. 3,000 px on the longest side or better. Every downstream size comes from this. You cannot add detail later.
- Export a 2,000 x 2,000 px square as your default. It clears Amazon's zoom recommendation, Shopee's and Lazada's recommended sizes, eBay's 1,600 px and Google's 1,500 px in one file.
- Crop to the right frame fill per channel. Amazon wants roughly 85%, Lazada around 80%, Shopee at least 60%. If you only make one crop, an 80 to 85% fill is the safest compromise.
- Keep the main image genuinely clean. Pure white where required, nothing added: no text, badges, borders, watermarks, logos or props. This single rule satisfies the hard gate on every platform in the table.
- Compress to the tightest ceiling, not each platform's own. Shopee's 2 MB limit is the strictest common constraint, so target under 2 MB and you will never be rejected on file size anywhere.
The repetitive part is step two and step five across dozens of SKUs, which is exactly the sort of work that should not be done by hand. PixelPrep handles the batch resizing, square padding and compression side of this so you can produce the marketplace-ready set from your masters in one pass and get back to the parts that need judgement.
A quick monthly audit
Set a recurring half-hour, once a month, and work through this list.
- Amazon: open Inventory > Improve Listing Quality and clear anything on your top twenty ASINs by revenue.
- Amazon: spot-check that your best sellers actually zoom on hover. If they do not, the main image is under 1,000 px.
- Shopee: look at your own listings in mobile search results and ask whether the cover image reads at thumbnail size.
- Lazada: check the Content Score column in Seller Centre and fix the lowest ten, starting with missing attributes.
- eBay: download the Listing Quality Report from Seller Hub > Performance and act on the single-photo listings first.
- Google: open Merchant Center diagnostics, filter for image issues, and confirm every item clears 500 x 500 px ahead of the January 2027 change.
- Everywhere: confirm no main image has picked up a promotional badge or sale sticker during a campaign and been left that way.
None of this is glamorous. But the sellers who quietly do it are the ones whose listings keep showing up, and the ones who do not are usually the ones convinced the algorithm has turned against them.