Photography

Product photos that don’t get rejected on Daraz

Marketplace listings reject images for boring, mechanical reasons — and then sellers blame the product. Here's what the platforms actually want, and what makes a shot sell once it's live.

8 min read

Short answer

Marketplace listings reject images for mechanical reasons: a background that isn't pure white on the main image, resolution under the minimum, watermarks or promotional text on the hero shot, and a product filling too little of the frame. Fix those four and your listing goes live.

  • Main image: pure white background, product at roughly 80–85% of the frame, no text or logos
  • Compose for a square crop from the start — marketplaces display square
  • Shoot well above the minimum resolution and deliver both web-sized and full-resolution files
  • The white-background shot gets you listed; the scale, detail, in-use and in-the-box shots get you paid
Image slot · 1200×1200 A compliant hero shot: real client product on a white sweep, square crop, product at roughly 80% of the frame. This image has to be the standard it describes. /wp-content/themes/ms-production-elementor/assets/blog/product-photography-daraz/product-on-white-sweep.jpg
Pure white, product filling the frame, nothing else in it.

Two different standards apply to every listing photo. The marketplace has rules, which are mechanical and non-negotiable. Then there's whether the photo makes someone buy, which is craft. Sellers usually fail the first and never get to argue about the second.

Get the mechanics right first

  • Clean white background on the main image. Pure white, not "nearly white" from a bedsheet with a shadow across it. This is the most common rejection.
  • Product filling the frame. Roughly 80–85% of the image. Small product floating in white space reads as an amateur listing and loses in a grid of thumbnails.
  • Resolution above the minimum, with room to zoom. Shoot far larger than required and deliver both a web-sized and a full-resolution file.
  • No text, logos, borders or watermarks on the main image. Save the badges and offer stickers for secondary slots where they're allowed.
  • Real product only. No props implying things that aren't in the box, no placeholder renders, no competitor packaging in frame.
  • Square crop. Marketplaces display square. Composing for square from the start beats cropping a landscape shot and cutting the product.

Then shoot so it actually sells

Once the listing is accepted, the rest of the gallery is where conversion happens, and most sellers stop after the white-background shot.

  1. Scale. One image that answers "how big is this?" — in a hand, next to a common object, or with dimensions marked.
  2. Texture and detail. A close-up of the material, stitching, finish or screen. This is what a buyer is squinting for.
  3. In use. The product doing its job, in a real setting. The single biggest lift in the gallery.
  4. What's in the box. Everything laid out. It cuts pre-sale questions and returns.
  5. The back and the underside. Sounds dull. Buyers of anything technical look for it.
  6. Colour truth. Shoot so the colour is accurate, and say so. Colour mismatch is a leading cause of returns, and returns cost more than the shoot.
One white-background image gets you listed. The other six get you paid.

Consistency across the catalogue

Every product on the same background, at the same distance, with the same lighting and the same crop. A store page where each item was shot slightly differently reads as unreliable even when each image is individually fine. This is the strongest argument for shooting a catalogue in one session rather than adding to it in ones and twos.

Phone or camera?

A modern phone in good light, on a tripod, against a proper white sweep, beats a camera used carelessly. What a studio setup actually buys you is repeatability — a hundred SKUs that match, colour you can trust, and retouching that doesn't have to fight a bad original. If you're shooting five products once, do it yourself and follow the rules above. If you're shooting a catalogue you'll keep adding to for two years, build or buy the consistency.

Image slot · 1600×900 One product, all seven frames from the list, laid out as a labelled grid. The single most useful image in this post — it turns the list into a template. /wp-content/themes/ms-production-elementor/assets/blog/product-photography-daraz/seven-shot-list-grid.jpg
The seven frames, shot in one setup.

A shot list for one product

If you shoot nothing else, shoot these seven. It is the list we work from on a catalogue set, and it covers both the marketplace rules and the questions buyers actually have:

  1. Hero: pure white background, product square in frame, filling most of it.
  2. Three-quarter angle: the shot that makes a flat product look like an object.
  3. Scale: in a hand, or beside something everyone recognises.
  4. Texture close-up: material, stitching, finish, screen.
  5. In use: the product doing its job in a real setting.
  6. What's in the box: everything laid out flat.
  7. Back or underside, with any ports, labels or fastenings visible.

Seven frames per SKU sounds like a lot until you shoot them in one setup. Once the light is built, each additional frame costs a minute.

Image slot · 1400×1050 Pull-back shot of the whole setup: window, product on a table, card propped on the shadow side, camera on a tripod. Show the setup, not the result. /wp-content/themes/ms-production-elementor/assets/blog/product-photography-daraz/window-light-setup.jpg
A window and one white card.

Lighting you can build for almost nothing

A window and one reflector beats a cheap ring light every time. Put the product side-on to a bright window with no direct sun, hold a sheet of white card on the shadow side to bounce light back, and shoot from the same height as the product rather than above it.

Two things ruin more home setups than anything else: mixing window light with a yellow room bulb, which makes colour impossible to correct, and shooting on a phone from too close, which distorts shape. Turn the room lights off, and step back and zoom slightly instead.

Image slot · 1600×900 One product shot three ways with labels. Makes the trade-off obvious, and doubles as a sales tool in client conversations. /wp-content/themes/ms-production-elementor/assets/blog/product-photography-daraz/background-options.jpg
Same product, three backgrounds.

Backgrounds: sweep, paper, or lightbox

  • Paper roll or card sweep. A single curved sheet behind and under the product means no visible seam where the surface meets the backdrop. Cheapest thing you can do that instantly looks professional.
  • Lightbox. Fine for small items and very consistent, but the flat, shadowless look reads as generic on some categories, especially anything premium.
  • Real surfaces. Wood, stone, fabric — for lifestyle shots only, never the marketplace hero image.

Whatever you choose, choose once. Consistency across the catalogue is worth more than any individual background.

How many products a day, realistically

On one setup with simple items — no styling, no models, no assembly — a working pace is a few dozen SKUs in a day at the seven-frame list, and considerably more if you cut to three frames each. Add styling, props or a model and it drops sharply, because every product becomes its own small production.

This is why catalogue work is quoted by finished images rather than by hours: the number of images predicts the work, and a day rate hides whether you're getting thirty or three hundred.

Re-shoot or retouch?

Retouching fixes dust, small blemishes, background evenness and colour accuracy. It cannot fix wrong-angle, wrong-lighting or soft focus, and attempting it produces the plastic look that makes buyers suspicious. If the shape or the light is wrong, re-shoot — it is cheaper than the returns caused by an image that misrepresents the product.

Export settings that quietly matter

  • sRGB, always. Export in anything else and colours shift in the browser. This is the single most common cause of "the photo looked different on my laptop".
  • Two sizes per image. A full-resolution master for print and zoom, and a compressed web version. Uploading a 12MB file slows your own listing page.
  • Square canvas for marketplace heroes, with the product centred and a small consistent margin.
  • Consistent file naming. SKU first, then shot type. Six months later, when you're adding one variant, you'll be grateful.
  • Strip location data from anything shot on a phone before publishing.

Shoot the video while the set is up

Marketplaces and social both reward short product video, and the cheapest time to shoot it is while the lighting and the set already exist. Two or three seconds of the product rotating, a hand opening or using it, a texture close-up — that's a listing video and three reels, captured in ten minutes.

If you are commissioning a product shoot, ask for this explicitly. It is a small addition to a stills day and it is the highest-return one available.

Keeping the catalogue consistent as it grows

Everything above is easy on day one and hard in month nine, when you're adding four new products to a set of eighty. The fix is a written recipe kept with the images: background, camera height, distance, lens or zoom level, light position, and export settings.

Half a page of notes. With it, a new batch matches the old one and the store page stays coherent. Without it, you end up re-shooting the whole catalogue — which is a real cost that people discover the hard way.

Image slot · 1600×900 Two frames of one product: plain catalogue version, and in-use or on-model version. Ideally from a client whose conversion you can speak to. /wp-content/themes/ms-production-elementor/assets/blog/product-photography-daraz/lifestyle-vs-catalogue.jpg
The catalogue shot lists it; the lifestyle shot sells it.

When model and lifestyle shots pay for themselves

Clothing, jewellery, bags, anything worn or held — a model shot usually lifts conversion more than any other single image, because buyers are asking how it looks on a person, not on a sweep. For homeware and electronics a lifestyle setting does the same job more cheaply: the product in a real room, in use.

The economics are straightforward. A model day costs materially more than a plain catalogue day, so it makes sense when one shoot covers many SKUs, or when the item's margin is high enough that a small conversion lift repays it. For a low-margin single product, spend the money on getting the seven core frames right instead.

FAQ

Questions this raises

Most often: background that isn't pure white on the main image, resolution below the minimum, watermarks or promotional text on the main image, or the product occupying too little of the frame. All four are mechanical and fixable before upload.

Use every slot the platform gives you. At minimum: white-background hero, scale, detail, in-use, and what's in the box.

Yes — that's a normal part of a product shoot. We deliver the marketplace-compliant set plus the lifestyle images for your own store and social media, from the same session.

Light retouching, yes — dust, background clean-up, colour accuracy. Heavy manipulation that misrepresents the product causes returns and, on some platforms, removal.

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