Product Photo Editing in the Browser, and Where It Stops

A product listing is a few photos and a price, and the photos do most of the selling because the buyer cannot pick the thing up. I am not a photographer. I have tested e-commerce platforms, for a railway and a telecom among others, and the part of product images I know is what happens after upload: the crop the platform forces, the resize, the compression, and the listing rejected because the main image broke a rule.

So this post splits the work honestly. The mechanical steps, which the free browser tools on ToolForte do well and without uploading anything. The platform rules those steps have to satisfy. And the three jobs that still need a real editor, where a browser tool will only waste your time.

Three jobs still need a real editor

Background removal. Marketplaces want the main image on pure white, and a phone photo on a kitchen table is not that. Automated removers (remove.bg, the background tools in Canva and Photoshop, the subject cutout on recent iPhones and Pixels) handle a mug or a shoe; jewellery, hair, glass and fabric edges still need manual masking. ToolForte has no background remover, and I would rather say that than point you at a crop tool.

Colour correction. The photo has to show the colour that arrives in the box, or it comes back. That means setting white balance so the white background is actually white, then comparing the screen with the physical product. It needs a curves or white-balance control, which is an editor feature, not a converter feature.

Retouching. Dust on the lens shows on a macro shot of a ring. Wrinkles show on a flat-lay shirt. Healing brush, clone stamp, and a steamer before the shoot. None of that happens in a browser converter.

Do these three first, on a lossless master (PNG, or the camera's RAW). Everything below is applied to the result.

The mechanical steps run fine in the browser

Crop to the platform's ratio. Square for Shopify and most marketplaces, the product filling 80 to 85 percent of the frame with equal padding. The Image Cropper has fixed ratios and exports JPEG or PNG. Crop every photo of a product from the same distance and the catalogue reads as one set.

Resize to the platform's size. Upload the largest size the platform accepts so zoom works, but not the 6000 pixel original, which some platforms downscale badly. One image goes through the Image Resizer. For a catalogue, the Bulk Image Resizer takes the whole folder, resizes to one target and writes JPEG, PNG or WebP at the quality you set, in one pass.

Compress. The Image Compressor re-encodes a photo as JPEG at the quality you choose; 80 to 85 is invisible on product shots and a fraction of the size. Two things to know: it outputs JPEG, so transparency is lost, and marketplaces recompress on upload anyway. Compression matters most on your own shop, where your file is what the customer downloads.

Convert. Shopify accepts WebP; the Image Format Converter makes WebP from JPEG or PNG with a quality slider. Amazon and eBay: stay with JPEG.

Check what is in the file. A phone photo carries EXIF data, including the GPS position if location was on. Marketplaces strip it; your own shop's theme may not. The Image Metadata Viewer shows what is there before you find out from a customer.

Watermark, carefully. The Image Watermark tool adds a text overlay, useful for proofs and previews. Never on a marketplace main image: Amazon rejects it and the other marketplaces have similar rules.

Platform rules as of September 2026

These change; check the platform's help page before a bulk upload. What they asked for when I wrote this:

Amazon - Main image on pure white (RGB 255, 255, 255), product filling at least 85 percent of the frame - At least 1000 pixels on the longest side; 1600 or more for zoom - No text, logos, watermarks, borders or props on the main image; lifestyle shots go in the other slots - JPEG, PNG, TIFF or non-animated GIF

Shopify - Recommended 2048 by 2048, square; same aspect ratio across the catalogue or the grid looks broken - 20 MB maximum per file, smaller loads faster - WebP accepted

Etsy - Recommended 2000 pixels on the shortest side - First photo shows the whole product; lifestyle shots do well on Etsy - Up to ten photos per listing

eBay - At least 500 pixels on the longest side; 1600 recommended for zoom - White or light background for the main image - Stock photos only for new, unused items

Consistency is what separates a shop from a garage sale

Every product shot from the same angle, at the same distance, under the same light, on the same background, cropped the same way. A customer scrolling a grid does not consciously notice consistency. They notice its absence and read it as amateur.

The cheap way to get it: tape marks on the floor for tripod and product, one window and one time of day, one sheet of white foam board, and the same crop ratio and target size for the whole batch. Batch tools exist so you set that once. Doing it by hand for the fortieth photo is where drift creeps in.

Set the crop, size and quality once, then run every photo through the same settings. If you edit in Lightroom or a similar tool, save the colour adjustments as a preset and apply it before the batch step, not after.

Free editors for the three jobs above

Photopea (browser, ad-supported): Photoshop-shaped, opens PSD files, has layers, masks and curves. The one I would point a non-designer at when a browser converter is not enough.

GIMP (desktop, open source): everything Photopea does and more, with a steeper learning curve.

Canva (free tier): background removal and basic adjustments with the least learning; the removal is decent on simple shapes.

Lightroom Mobile (free tier): the best of these for colour and for batch presets; the useful parts need the subscription.

remove.bg: the strongest one-click background removal; low resolution is free, full resolution is paid per image.

Your phone's own editor: exposure, warmth and sharpening are enough for a lot of products, and the subject cutout on recent iPhones and Pixels is a usable background remover for simple shapes.

For the same adjustment on fifty photos, Lightroom's batch mode or ImageMagick on the command line beats doing it by hand.

FAQ

How many photos per listing?

As many as the platform allows, and at least five: main image on white, front, back, a detail close-up, and one in use. Fill Etsy's ten if you can.

Do I need a photographer?

Not for the first few dozen products. A recent phone, a window and the batch steps above get you a consistent catalogue. Past a hundred products, or when colour and finish carry the price, a professional or a product photography service is cheaper than the returns.

Do clothes need a model?

Flat-lay and mannequin shots are accepted everywhere. Photos on a person tend to sell better; if a model is out of budget, a friend and a plain wall beat a mannequin.

My monitor is not calibrated. How do I check colour?

Look at the edited photo on two or three other screens (phone, laptop, tablet) next to the physical item. If it looks right on two of them you are close enough for most products. For paint, fabric and cosmetics, a calibration device costs about a hundred euros once, or add a note that colours can vary by screen.