What’s the most annoying part of getting product images ready for Shopify?

Shopify Discussion
1

I’m trying to understand the real workflow sellers deal with before making assumptions. What part of preparing product images takes the most time or causes the most frustration?

6 Answers

6
2

Hi @lawrenceJ,

Maintaining consistency and resizing—making sure each product photo has a consistent aspect ratio and a clean background—usually takes the most time, especially when working with raw photos shot in various lighting conditions.

Additionally, it requires a lot of laborious human adjustment to balance file size vs. quality (compressing high-resolution photographs so they don’t slow down store speed while keeping them sharp for zoom).

If you like this please mark my comment as solution.
Thanks!

3

The biggest time sink for me is not resizing, it’s getting every image to line up consistently. Supplier photos often have different crops, background shades, and product scale, so collection pages look messy.

What works for me:

  • Pick one ratio before editing. I use square images and keep the product centered with roughly the same margin on every side.
  • Remove or clean backgrounds in one batch, then crop the whole batch together instead of finishing images one product at a time.
  • Export as JPG for normal product photos, usually around 1600 to 2000 px wide. Use PNG only when transparency is actually needed.
  • Name files before uploading, for example blue-shirt-front.jpg and blue-shirt-back.jpg. This makes sorting and replacing images much faster.

Also check the mobile crop before publishing. Small alignment issues are much more obvious in a two-column mobile collection grid.

4

Thanks Angelina, really helpful! Quick one — how do you currently handle the compressing/resizing side? Doing it manually, or using a tool for it? Curious what people’s actual workflow looks like.

5

Thank you for replying, really great. Curious what you’re using for the batch background/crop step — manual editing, or another tool? And is that mostly for your own workflow or client work?

6

Hello there @lawrenceJ
For mine, the biggest frustration is normally the, are they really necessary? Repetitive clean up prior to uploading. Remove backgrounds, maintain consistent dimensions and alignment, compress files without losing quality, and properly name images, when you have lots of products, a surprising amount of time can be sucked up by these repetitive tasks.

This gets even more tedius when there are multiple variations of a product and you need to match each image. A uniform naming and folder conventions can help, and process images in batches before you actually upload them to Shopify.

7

Thanks, @SealSubs-Roan For a typical batch with multiple product variations, are you doing that cleanup manually on your device, using a tool, or handing it to someone else? Roughly how many images would be in that batch?