Product photos with your phone: how to take them and prepare them for your online store

Photos are the first thing a shopper looks at in an online store. In Baymard Institute testing, 56% of participants began by exploring the product images as soon as they opened a product page, before reading the title or description. For most products, a phone, daylight and a few simple rules are enough for clean, consistent photos.

This guide explains what the photos should show, how to take them with a phone and how to prepare them for your website: size, format, file names and alt text. It also covers what Google and Meta require. Sources were checked on 14 October 2026.

What the photos should show

Online shoppers cannot touch the product, so the photos must answer the questions they would ask in a shop. According to Baymard, 42% of users try to judge a product’s size from its photos, so it recommends at least one image showing the product next to people or other objects.

For each product, plan these photos:

1. The main photo: the whole product, from the front, on a clean background.
2. Other angles: side, back or top, depending on the product.
3. Details: the material, stitching, label or whatever sets the product apart.
4. Size: the product in a hand, in use or next to a familiar object.
5. Each variant: every colour or model with its own photos, so customers see exactly what they order.
6. Package contents, when the product has several parts.

Google allows up to 10 additional images per product in Merchant Center, for different angles or the product in use, while Meta recommends four or more images for each catalogue product.

Taking them with a phone

• Daylight, not direct sun. According to Samsung, the most important element of any photo is the amount of indirect light it receives. Place the product near a window, out of direct sunlight, and switch off room lights so the colours do not mix.
• White card for shadows. Put it opposite the window: it lights the side of the product in shadow.
• A clean lens. Wipe the lens with a soft, clean cloth, as Google and Samsung advise; fingerprints make photos hazy.
• A steady phone. Use a stand or rest the phone on something, and keep it in the same place for every product in a series.
• Not too close. Samsung says the standard lens works best when the subject is at least 12 inches (about 30 cm) away. For small products, shoot from that distance and crop later.
• Grid and level. On an iPhone, turn on Grid and Level in the camera settings (Apple) so the product is straight and centred. On other phones, look for the grid in the camera settings.
• Locked focus and exposure. On an iPhone, touch and hold the product until “AE/AF Lock” appears, then drag up or down to adjust brightness. Photos in a series then come out the same.
• One format. Choose one aspect ratio for all photos, such as 1:1 (square), and keep it from product to product.

Background and consistency

Google says photos that clearly show the product, for example against a white background, are preferred (product guidance), and Meta recommends a white backdrop for catalogue images. For the main photo, a large sheet of white paper curved behind the product is enough.

More important than the background itself is that photos look the same across products: the same light, distance, background and format. According to Nielsen Norman Group, consistent images make product listings easier to scan and compare; they need not be identical, just in the same style.

For Merchant Center, Google requires the product to fill 75% to 90% of the image and does not allow promotional elements, watermarks, borders or generic images that do not show the product. Meta advises against text that covers the product, watermarks or temporary prices on images. Keep text for the page and the photo clean.

Preparing them for the website

In practice, keep an original at least 1500 pixels on its longest side and let the website create smaller versions. Ask your developer, or check yourself, that:

• The site uses modern formats. According to web.dev, WebP is usually 25–35% smaller than JPEG or PNG, and AVIF has shown more than 50% savings compared with JPEG. Keep a JPEG copy for Meta catalogues, which accept only JPEG or PNG.
• Phones get phone-sized images. Serving desktop-sized images to phones can use 2–4 times more data than needed. The site should offer several sizes with srcset.
• Every image has a width and height. The width and height attributes reserve space for the image so the page does not shift while it loads (web.dev).
• The main photo is not delayed. Images further down can be lazy-loaded, but not the first product photo: web.dev advises against lazy-loading images visible when the page opens, especially its largest element (LCP). On 73% of mobile pages, that element is an image.
• Photos are <img> elements. According to Google, standard HTML image elements help it find and process images, unlike images set as CSS backgrounds.

Our website speed guide explains how to measure the speed of your product pages.

File names and alt text

Before uploading, rename photos with words that describe the product, in lower case, without accents and with hyphens between words: blue-ceramic-cup-250ml.jpg is more useful than IMG_0234.jpg. Google says file names give only very light clues about an image, so do not stuff them with keywords.

Alternative text (the alt attribute) is read aloud to people who cannot see the image and appears when the photo fails to load. Google uses it, together with analysis of the image itself and the page content, to understand what the photo shows. Briefly describe what is visible, as W3C also advises:

• Good: alt="Blue ceramic cup, 250 ml, side view showing the handle"
• Bad: alt="cup cups ceramic cup blue offer online shop", because Google treats keyword stuffing as a poor user experience.

Place photos near the text that describes them, on the relevant product page, as Google recommends. Our online store guide explains how to describe the product itself.

Google, Meta and other people’s photos

Albania is not on the list of countries where Google supports Shopping ads and Merchant Center free listings, so its requirements matter mainly if you sell through it in other countries. Even so, they make a good standard for any store. In product structured data, Google recommends several high-resolution images of at least 50,000 pixels, in 16:9, 4:3 and 1:1 ratios, at URLs Google can crawl and index.

If you use images created with generative AI, Merchant Center requires them to carry metadata showing they were AI-generated, and that metadata must not be removed.

Photos from suppliers or other stores

Do not use a supplier’s or another store’s photos without written permission. Albania’s Law No. 35/2016 on copyright lists photographic creations among protected works, but its article on photographic works excludes photos of material objects and similar products, so whether a given product photo is protected depends on the case. Permission avoids disputes, and your own photos show the real product and set you apart from stores selling the same item. This is not legal advice.

Illustrative example: a ceramics shop with 40 products

The shop photographs all its products in one afternoon, by the same window. The phone sits on a stand with the grid on and a 1:1 format; a large sheet of white paper is behind the product and a white card on the shadow side. Each product gets five photos: front, side, top, a detail of the glaze and the cup in a hand for scale. The photos are renamed, such as blue-ceramic-cup-250ml-1.jpg, and each gets alt text describing it. The website serves them as WebP in several sizes, and the first product photo is not lazy-loaded.

Checklist

• Every product has a main photo on a clean background and other angles.
• At least one photo shows the product’s size.
• Every variant has its own photos.
• Light, background, distance and format are the same for all products.
• The main photo has no text, watermarks or borders.
• Originals are at least 1500 pixels; the site serves WebP or AVIF in several sizes.
• File names and alt text describe the product.
• The first product photo is not lazy-loaded.
• You have the right to use every photo.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a professional photographer?

For the catalogue, a phone with good light and the same rules for every photo is often enough. A photographer is worth it for brand images, such as banners or lifestyle shots, and for products that are hard to photograph, such as jewellery or glass.

Can I use my supplier’s photos?

Only with written permission and on the supplier’s terms. Even with permission, add your own photos, especially of the product in use, so your store stands out from others selling the same product.

Product photos and descriptions are part of planning an online store. If you are building or improving your store, explore our online store service or get in touch.