How 261 Shopify stores photograph their products

• The median product has 5 photos. 58% of products have five or more, and 12% have one photo or none.
• The median main photo is 2,000 pixels on its longest side. 41% reach 2,048 pixels; 6% are under 1,000, below the size Amazon asks for zoom.
• Square and portrait are tied at 48% and 48%. Apparel stores go portrait (84%), beauty stores go square (72%). Landscape main photos are rare.
• 55% of main photos sit on a near-white background, but only 32% on pure white. The rest of the white backgrounds are slightly grey or off-white, which shows as a faint box on a white product page.
• 67% of stores use one shape for every main photo. A third mix shapes, which makes a collection grid look uneven.

We collected live Shopify stores from public lists of Shopify stores and brand roundups, then kept only stores whose public product feed answered on October 15, 2026: 261 stores in apparel, jewelry, beauty, shoes and bags, and home decor. For each store we read the first 30 products in its public feed and recorded the number of photos and the size of the main photo, as the feed reports them.

For the background test we downloaded a small copy of up to eight main photos per store and measured the outer two-pixel border: a photo counts as near-white when at least 90% of the border is RGB 240 or above, and as pure white at RGB 253 or above. A product that touches the edge of the frame can lower the share, so these figures are conservative.

Limits. The sample leans toward established brands, because public lists favor them. We did not measure alt text (the public feed does not include it), whether a person is in the photo, or sales. The store list and the script are available on request.