You spent three hours shooting a product set, edited the colors, cropped to square, and uploaded. Then the marketplace rejects two images for white-background violations and one for insufficient resolution. The listing goes live a day late, and the algorithm buries it below competitors who launched on schedule.
This checklist covers the twelve points that account for the majority of image rejections across Amazon, Shopify, Walmart Marketplace, and TikTok Shop.
1. Background purity. Pure white means RGB 255,255,255 within a tolerance of plus-or-minus 5. Off-white walls, subtle shadows, and gradient studio backdrops all fail automated checks. Shoot on a true white sweep and verify with a color picker before upload.
2. Product fill ratio. The product should occupy at least 85 percent of the frame. Too much white space signals a thumbnail rather than a hero image. Too little and the product gets lost on mobile.
3. Minimum resolution. Most platforms require at least 1000 pixels on the longest side for zoom functionality. Upload at 2000 pixels or above to future-proof against rising minimums.
4. Aspect ratio consistency. Mix square and portrait images in the same listing and the grid view looks broken. Pick one ratio per listing and stick to it across all slots.
5. No watermarks or logos. Marketplace algorithms flag overlaid text and brand marks on main images. Save promotional badges for secondary slots or A-plus content.
6. Color profile embedding. Strip the ICC profile and the browser guesses wrong. Embed sRGB IEC61966-2.1 so every device interprets your colors the same way.
7. File format and compression. JPEG at quality 85-92 balances file size and artifact visibility. PNG is fine for graphics with flat color but balloons file size for photographs.
8. No borders or frames. A decorative border eats into the product fill ratio and trips automated validators.
9. Lighting consistency across the set. If image one is warm and image five is cool, the listing looks assembled from different shoots. Batch-correct white balance before export.
10. Shadow handling. Natural soft shadows are acceptable. Hard drop shadows or floating-product cutouts with no shadow look artificial and reduce trust.
11. Filename hygiene. Some crawlers index filenames. Use descriptive kebab-case names rather than IMG_4832.jpg.
12. Alt-text and metadata. Fill the alt field with a concise product description including color, material, and size. It helps accessibility and gives search crawlers context that the image pixels alone cannot convey.
Run through this list before every upload batch. It takes ten minutes and saves a rejected-listing cycle that costs a full day of lost visibility.
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