Real data from real sellers. No surveys, no guesses — scraped & clustered conversations.
Methodology: 5,315 posts scraped across 14 seller-focused subreddits (r/shopify, r/ecommerce, r/Etsy, r/FulfillmentByAmazon, r/dropshipping, r/productphotography, r/Entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness, etc.) using 9 targeted search queries. All time range. Posts passed a strict two-stage relevance filter: first a global filter requiring product-photo-specific phrases, then cluster-level scoring requiring multi-word keyword matches (minimum score 3). 2,280 posts passed global filter → 1,344 classified into clusters. Every verbatim and thread link goes to the original Reddit post. Ranked by frequency × emotional intensity.
Most sellers start with a phone and window light. The gap between 'good enough' and 'converts well' is where money is left on the table.
“Here’s a quick behind the scenes video from our recent product photoshoot for one of our clients who’s selling luxury cannabis products.”
r/productphotography 0↑ · 9 comments
“Hey folks, here's a little story that store owners might get. A couple years back, I was deep into crafting ceramics, trying my hand at selling them on Shopify. But, let's be real, I wasn’t exactly an ad guru. My product photos? Snapped on my trusty iPhone. Sales were decent, nothing to write home about.”
r/ecommerce 3↑ · 3 comments
“practicing how to shoot product photography on a bookbag. originally i was using a light box but no one on this sub recommended it and i think the images improved greatly because the light is a lot less harsh. I am satisfied with how they look now but what can i do to improve? Using a cannon EOS 6D 50mm lens on a bipod with iso 100, 4.5 aperture,...”
r/productphotography 1↑ · 4 comments
“I’ve been digging into the biggest challenges sellers face when launching their online stores (Shopify or other platforms), and one thing that keeps popping up is product photography. It seems like good photos can make or break your sales.”
r/shopify 13↑ · 87 comments
“Trying to get as much feedback as I can to optimise my site.”
r/shopify 2↑ · 18 comments
“i have an old canon eos10d and a 70-300mm lens. i edit all my photos in the photos app on macos. i have no idea hwo to use my camera honestly and just hope they turn out right. please give me advice/criticism. i feel like for the tools i work with my photos turn out pretty alright. thanks for reading”
r/productphotography 4↑ · 12 comments
“Hi everyone! I'm launching a small leather accessories brand in October 2025, and my first collection is currently in production. I’ll be receiving the finished products soon, and I’m starting to stress a bit about product photography.”
r/productphotography 1↑ · 13 comments
“I don't have enough money to buy a DSLR.I need some advice.”
r/productphotography 2↑ · 9 comments
Sellers invest hours in photography only to have platforms aggressively compress their images. Shopify, Etsy, Amazon all degrade quality on upload. The most emotionally charged topic.
“I’ve been using the Shrine Pro Theme 1.0.1 for my Shopify store, but I’m facing a frustrating issue. My product images on the product pages appear pixelated and low-quality, even though the original images are high resolution.”
r/dropshipping 1↑ · 8 comments
“Hey Everyone, I just got my brand registered and am trying to fill out the modules for A+ Content. I am uploading images and they are all coming out pixelated. I have tried cropping to the exact dimensions and larger dimensions with same aspect ratio but nothing is coming out sharp. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? The images...”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 11↑ · 28 comments
“I'm using Debut theme. It surprises me that people don't seem to bring this up as often as it should have, considering that images are a very important part of selling online, and blurry images (sharp when uploaded, but becomes blurry due to Shopify) are a turn off and makes the site look unprofessional.”
r/shopify 1↑ · 15 comments
“I’m sharing this in case anyone else runs into the same issue. I spent an hour trying to fix this and stumbled upon a solution by accident. If your image with text appears blurry on mobile view in Shopify, here’s what worked for me:”
r/shopify 5↑ · 8 comments
“Does anybody have image compression problems? My image are edited in light room and exported with a 1500px width in PNG (both JPG and PNG result in the same) format and it shows really blurry on the main product page slider. If I click the photo, it's fine, and It's fine in the thumbnail. Here is an example of a product... Link”
r/Etsy 8↑ · 4 comments
“Hi guys, I am not much of a coder but I was wondering what should I add to the css in the image banner widget to make it visible only on mobile/tablet ?”
r/shopify 3↑ · 7 comments
“Hey guys, anyone knows why Shopify image compression is so bad or how to fix it? I uploaded a high-quality logo, tried different sizes (from small to extremely big), format png. I use the Narrative theme. My logo looks blurry on the site no matter what I do. Did anyone experience a similar issue?”
r/shopify 2↑ · 6 comments
“Edit- this a mental health problem. I am aware of dpi, and things like that, for whatever reason when trying to make multiple sizes for printify I can’t get it to stay at 300 dpi even when I’m trying to personalize each file for the size. I am serious about hiring someone to work with me.”
r/Printify 1↑ · 7 comments
One-by-one background removal works for a few products. At hundreds of SKUs per week, it becomes a nightmare. Batch processing is the real need.
“I've been experimenting with different ways to create cleaner product photos for listings and social posts. Right now I'm mostly trying to remove backgrounds and make simple edits so the images look a bit more professional without spending too much time in complex design tools.I've tried a couple of background removal tools and some basic editors,...”
r/dropshipping 6↑ · 24 comments
“Is there a service or AI program out there that will do automatic background removal and create realistic shadows for product photography?”
r/productphotography 4↑ · 12 comments
“When it comes to setting up designs ready to print in the product generator page, how crazy do I need to go with background removal? Most of my images are made with a black background, so if that was printed on a white shirt, that would print the whole black background square as well wouldn’t it? And using the “free” background removal tools...”
r/Printify 1↑ · 15 comments
“🎨 AI Background Remover \- Uses ONNX Runtime to run AI directly in browser \- No watermarks (unlike free remove.bg) \- Multiple background colors (transparent, white, black, custom) \- Free, unlimited use”
r/smallbusiness 0↑ · 2 comments
“I have an ecommerce business focusing on furniture and home decor. Right now we have our design assistant remove the backgrounds on our product photos so they are matted on a white background for a clean catalog look. We are looking to offload this now to a service that can deal with larger volumes.”
r/ecommerce 2↑ · 13 comments
“I want to start selling more and mainly use studio six and photoroom for background removal. Sometimes photoroom adds objects which I don't love. I made these ones on studio six - studiosix.io ... how are you guys getting product photos?”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 0↑ · 12 comments
“I’m trying to find free websites that are actually super useful and don’t feel like scams or paywalls.”
r/smallbusiness 74↑ · 39 comments
“I'm curious about what background remover you use, how do you choose which one to use?”
r/shopify 4↑ · 25 comments
Active sellers spend 15-25 hours/week on photo editing. Post-production costs often exceed shooting costs. The ROI question is constant.
“\- Pixlr is a cloud-based set of image editing tools and utilities, including a number of photo editors and a photo sharing service. The suite was intended for non-professionals, however the apps range from simple to advanced photo editing.”
r/Entrepreneur 0↑ · 6 comments
“I make dog clothes, and I’d really like to up my game in regards to my photography. I’ve looked into Photoshop, but the learning curve seems huge. What programs do all of you use to edit? Thanks in advance!”
r/Etsy 2↑ · 26 comments
“Hey all, I'll try keep this as quick as possible. I work in the soft furnishing field with my father, and a LOT of advertising is based around photos I take with my Nikon of the finished result of an interior, such as curtains hanging, sofas in place and anything to do with textiles. I like to think I have quite an eye for photography however I...”
r/Entrepreneur 3↑ · 17 comments
“I’m not very good at using photo editing software to make all my crops uniform, that I need to improve on.”
r/productphotography 9↑ · 8 comments
“I run a photo editing business that focuses on photo restoration, and our best-selling service is family photo composition—combining people from different photos into one meaningful image.”
r/smallbusiness 1↑ · 4 comments
“I’ve been trying to upload hand-drawn designs to Printify but I can’t figure out how to get rid of their backgrounds. Printify’s “remove background” tool is either greyed out so I can’t click it, or doesn’t do the job well. Do I need to download separate photo editing software? Any advice would be much appreciated!”
r/Printify 1↑ · 2 comments
“One of my friends has two online store that have nice profits after all overhead costs and he literally just uses his phone for all his product photos. I have plenty of photography lighting, probably overkill, but if I use a camera with a wider lens’s will it dramatically change the quality of my photos? For example, I would like to photograph a...”
r/ecommerce 19↑ · 45 comments
“After 5 months of development, I finally completed this app. It can take professional product photos or creative photos without the help of professional equipment and design experts, and only needs to be done on the mobile phone.”
r/shopify 9↑ · 6 comments
AI-generated product photos promise to eliminate traditional shoots. Reality: twisted hands, wrong proportions, uncanny results. Sellers are curious but burned.
“I have a unique product that is designed by myself that I would like to generate AI images for. Does anyone have experience with any AI image generator that does not only change background but also receives prompts to position the product in different perspectives? I have tried DALLE with no success. For instance, if I were to upload...”
r/ecommerce 2↑ · 10 comments
“I’ve been building a Shopify app that helps with:”
r/dropshipping 1↑ · 6 comments
“I bought a tapestry from an Etsy seller, and only after receiving it and seeing it up close with all the details I realised it had traces of it being AI generated. These details weren't noticeable from the photos of the item listed. I asked the seller, and they admit themselves that AI was used for it and then "adjusted" by "their designer".”
r/Etsy 165↑ · 187 comments
“I’m working on an idea and wanted honest feedback from business owners, marketers, and e-commerce sellers here.”
r/smallbusiness 1↑ · 10 comments
“I'm trying to put an AI generated image on a shirt, but Printify is notifying me that the image is low quality. How do I fix this?”
r/Printify 1↑ · 10 comments
“I'm looking for calendars by original artists, and in my search this one was repeatedly suggested. As someone who is very familiar with AI image generation tools, I recognized similar styles in this product and many of the shop's other products. I don't want to assume people are using AI if they're not. If they are, and still making dope stuff, I...”
r/Etsy 1315↑ · 39 comments
“I have been generating images for the past dew days and i have create my own gpt for prompt generations which i used to generate images in other websites. Just curious how are the images.”
r/dropshipping 9↑ · 25 comments
“I have a logo and I want to get it printed or embroidered on a shirt and hoodie. Problem is the background is a tanish color and I want to get a shirt and hoodie in blue and red and it looks silly with a tan logo background on a red or blue hoodie. Honestly I'd prefer it to not have a background at all and just be the words and logo.”
r/smallbusiness 0↑ · 23 comments
Dropshippers receive low-res, watermarked supplier photos identical to every competitor. Enhancing or replacing them is essential but painful.
“One thing I keep noticing with supplier images is that every product photo has a different background, lighting, and overall look. Some are on white, some on grey, some in a random room, some low-res, some overexposed.”
r/shopify 3↑ · 19 comments
“Hi, I’m based in Germany and run a small dropshipping / e-commerce business. I’m considering using image-to-image AI to generate product photos based on supplier images, where the final images look clearly different (new angles, lighting, scenes), but the underlying product remains the same.”
r/dropshipping 3↑ · 8 comments
“I’m currently building out a store and one thing I keep struggling with is getting high-quality, professional-looking product photos.”
r/dropshipping 3↑ · 11 comments
“I'm spending hours on google gemini's nano banano to get just one good generated product picture based on the inputs (supplier images and description) I give, complex products that include text or have unusual features are almost impossible to get right. Is the technology just not there yet or am I using the wrong software?”
r/dropshipping 4↑ · 21 comments
“You get pictures from suppliers/supplier's websites and you are not pleased with the quality. What is your go-to strategy before uploading photos to your store?”
r/dropshipping 3↑ · 3 comments
“I have seen many people starting their store and they all do the same mistake. They use the SUPPLIER photos, that are just terrible and you can see in them, that they are edited in photoshop or something. If a customer cant believe what he sees he will either return the item upon delivery or never buy in the first place.”
r/dropshipping 1↑ · 4 comments
“Testing new products for my general store used to bleed me dry on creative costs. I'd spend $50-$100 on cheap edits just to find out the product was a dud. It's a massive waste of cash.”
r/dropshipping 1↑ · 3 comments
“Hey everyone, I’m looking to level up the visuals on my dropshipping store and want to know what’s in your toolkit. What do you swear by to get those crisp, polished product shots that convert (esp source from those aliexpress images)?”
r/dropshipping 5↑ · 12 comments
Unoptimized images tank page speed and SEO. But over-compression kills quality. Finding the balance — format, size, alt text — is a constant battle.
“Just wanted to see if anyone else is running into this.”
r/shopify 10↑ · 13 comments
“My site speed on desktop is above 80, but mobile is low and pagespeed insights suggests main culprit is the poor image compression. It's recommending webp but webp isn't natively supported by wordpress.”
r/ecommerce 5↑ · 2 comments
“I’m using the prestige theme and recently the load time for the banner image is very visible , it was never like that. There’s a lag before the banner image appears. I’ve used Page Speed insights to check and it’s showed that the LCP for the banner image is 16 s. Which is slow but I’ve optimized and compressed the images as much as I could while...”
r/shopify 3↑ · 7 comments
“I have some shirts that I sell and I want to test images to see which works the best (like a man or woman wearing the shirt, or different colors). So this requires me to have multiple listings where the only thing that is different is the main image on Etsy.”
r/Printify 1↑ · 1 comments
“Recently, I posted about the free image optimization app I built for Shopify. Didn’t expect much. But quite a few store owners from this subreddit installed it especially people managing large catalogs. And I'm quite happy with the feedback they give me via messages. Here are the most common things I’ve been hearing:”
r/Printify 2↑ · 2 comments
“Hey guys, I’m looking to convert all my Shopify store images from JPG/PNG to WebP to improve site speed.”
r/shopify 6↑ · 34 comments
“I've been running our fashion store on Shopify for about 2 years now and we've been fortunate to see consistent growth. One of the biggest challenges I've faced is keeping up with image optimization as our catalog has expanded to over 300 products (with 4-5 images each).”
r/shopify 7↑ · 18 comments
“Large, under-optimized images slow down site speed and drive people away from your store. Research shows that if an eCommerce site loads slower than expected, over 45% of visitors admit they’re less likely to make a purchase.”
r/shopify 12↑ · 5 comments
Every marketplace demands different image specs. Sellers manually create 4-6 versions of every product image for Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, eBay, social media. No tool solves this end-to-end.
“Hoping someone has figured this out already. I usually have 5-10 items I list to multiple marketplaces. Etsy/Amazon/Shopify etc. Every platform has different image size requirements and I end up manually having to resize each image for each platform in Photopea. It takes forever.”
r/ecommerce 11↑ · 34 comments
“I mean I have a screenshots from my app functionality and due to the image size requirements from the Shopify store images look compressed and I don’t like them at all.”
r/shopifyDev 1↑ · 4 comments
“My girlfriend started an ecomm biz in the pets space recently and she wanted to get listed on Amazon. She told me she has to pay agencies $1000 just to get some product images for Amazon. The turnaround takes like at least 2 weeks... This is insane.”
r/AmazonSeller 0↑ · 27 comments
“I have 3-4 product images per product but they are in different dimensions; some in square format and some in 16:9 format which looks okay on the laptop but on a mobile doesn’t look so good.”
r/shopify 8↑ · 10 comments
“Good morning all. I am new to shopify and am trying to troubleshoot the main cause of my slow loading product images, both on product cards and pages. The images themselves are each 2000x2000 and under 200KB in size. Is this an image optimization issue? How should I go about troubleshooting this to isolate the actual underlying problem?”
r/shopify 2↑ · 5 comments
“I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what is happening here. When I zoom into my images in the Printify editor while creating a product, in this case posters, they are blurry. I've created 5 different listings, all of which come in 7 different dimensions. I have used multiple version of the files, for example I've made 7 different files of...”
r/Printify 1↑ · 5 comments
“i am new to etsy and i want to place my first product. I have uploaded one picture with recommended size dimensions: 2000x2000 px and it looks scratched when i am clicking on the picture.”
r/Etsy 0↑ · 2 comments
Amazon's image requirements are strict and enforcement is automated. Sellers with genuinely compliant images get suppressed. Direct revenue loss.
“RESOLVED: Make a 1600 x 1600 pic of the item as your main image. It should help resolve the issue in 15 mins once the new pic is uploaded. Thanks to /u/r1cksta”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 15↑ · 28 comments
“I’ve been digging into product image workflows lately and was surprised how often listings get flagged or suppressed over things like background, shadows, or sizing.”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 3↑ · 11 comments
“New FBA seller here, finished creating my first listing yesterday. The status remains as suppressed giving no reason why. I suspect (after some googling) my photo's and info graphics are falling short of Amazon's requirements, however being a rookie, I cannot identify where!”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 5↑ · 2 comments
“I'm working to get A+ Content up for one of our best selling ASIN. This listing has a BSR <10,000 and we have been selling this item for a few years. The reason for adding A+ is to increase conversion.”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 2↑ · 2 comments
“I've been seeing a lot of new tools promising to generate Amazon listing images and A+ content automatically.”
r/FulfillmentByAmazon 15↑ · 39 comments
“Hey Amazon Sellers! I'm an experienced designer specializing in Amazon Listing Images and A+ Content. I’ve worked with one of the leading Amazon service agencies. Providing top-quality listing design services. However, Due to contractual limitations. I am unable to showcase any of my previous work in my portfolio. ...”
r/smallbusiness 1↑ · 2 comments