eBay's picture rules in plain English: sizes, watermarks and stock photos

Two searches reached our site last month that we answer only sideways: “ebay photo policy” and “ebay watermark policy”. We rank in the twenties and thirties for both, which is a polite way of saying nobody found what they needed.

So here is the answer, taken from eBay's own UK help pages rather than from anybody's summary of them.

The short version

• Minimum 500 × 500 pixels. Recommended 1600 × 1600. The minimum is a floor, not a target.
• No watermarks, logos or added badges — eBay says they can affect where your listing appears in search.
• No catalogue or stock photo on a used item. That one is absolute.
• Files up to 12MB, in JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, WEBP, HEIC or AVIF.

The size rule, and the number hiding inside it

eBay's selling help puts it plainly:

“Images should have a minimum resolution of 500 x 500 pixels but we recommend images that are about 1600 x 1600.”

Most people read the first half of that sentence and stop. But 1600 × 1600 is not a slightly better version of 500 × 500 — it is more than three times the width and about ten times the pixels. eBay is not describing a range. It is describing a floor you are allowed to scrape and a standard it would like you to hit.

And here is the bit worth knowing if you sell in more than one place: 500 × 500 is exactly the minimum Google Merchant Center sets for product images too. We went through that rule and the contradiction sitting next to it in Google's 500 × 500 image rule. Two of the biggest places a small British seller lists, the same floor. One photography standard covers both, so there is no reason to keep separate image sets.

The practical version: shoot at whatever your phone gives you, which on any recent handset is far above 1600 on the long edge, and stop worrying about size entirely. The rule only bites if you are cropping hard, using screenshots, or reusing images somebody emailed you years ago.

Watermarks: allowed, discouraged, and quietly expensive

This is the one people actually search for, and the answer is more interesting than a straight no. eBay's guidance reads:

“Do not add graphics to images such as badges, logos, copyright notices or watermarks as they can affect your listing's placement in search results”

Read that sentence carefully, because the consequence it names is specific. It does not say your listing will be removed. It says the graphics can affect your listing's placement in search results — the cost is visibility, and visibility is the whole game.

Sellers usually watermark for one reason: to stop competitors lifting their photographs. That is a real problem and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But it is worth seeing the trade honestly. You are accepting a search-placement risk on every listing, permanently, to deter a copying problem that may happen occasionally. For most small sellers that is the wrong way round, and the better answer to photo theft is reporting it when it happens rather than degrading every listing in advance.

The stock-photo rule that catches people

“You can’t use a catalogue or stock photo if you’re listing an item as used.”

No hedging in that one. And it is the rule most often broken by accident, because the manufacturer's image is the easiest one to find and comfortably the most flattering.

The logic is straightforward once you say it out loud. Somebody buying a used item is buying that object — its particular scuffs, its missing cable, the sun-fade on one side. A stock photo shows them a different object. It is not a technicality; it is the difference between a description and a picture of something else.

If you are selling new stock, manufacturer images are a different question with its own set of permissions, which we went through separately in using manufacturer photos on eBay.

The smaller details, in one place

From the same page, worth knowing and rarely repeated:

• HEIC is accepted. That is the default format on modern iPhones, so you can upload straight off the phone without converting.
• 1:1 or 16:9 are the aspect ratios eBay says look best across listings and search results.
• White backgrounds are usually best — but eBay itself notes a darker background can suit shiny or reflective items such as jewellery. Useful permission if you sell anything that mirrors the room back at you.
• Your main photo should show the whole item face-on, and for a bundle it should show everything included.
• Add something for scale where size is unclear — eBay suggests a coin or a ruler next to the item.

What argues the other way

Guidance is not the same as policy. Everything above comes from eBay's selling help pages, which are advice with consequences attached, not the formal listing policy documents. We went looking for the formal picture policy as well and the URL we had returned a page about active content — JavaScript in listings — not about photographs. So treat this as eBay telling you clearly what it wants and what it will cost you, rather than as a quoted rulebook.

The watermark trade is genuinely yours to make. If you sell one-off items you have photographed carefully and you have been copied before, the calculation may come out differently for you than for someone shifting bulk stock. I have given you eBay's stated consequence; the weighing is yours.

And rules move. These pages were read on 1 September 2026. Platform help pages change quietly and without announcement — that is precisely what happened with Google's image requirements while we were writing about them last week — so if you are reading this much later, open the page yourself.

Ten minutes well spent

Open your three best-selling listings. Check the main photo is at least 1600 on the long edge, has nothing added to it, and is genuinely a picture of the thing in the box rather than a picture of one like it. That is the whole audit, and for most sellers it will pass on two of the three.

Sources. All quotations are verbatim from eBay UK's selling help page Adding pictures to your listings, fetched raw and read directly on 1 September 2026; each quoted fragment was checked byte-for-byte against that page rather than against a rendering of it. One honest limitation: we also fetched the URL we held for eBay's formal picture policy and it returned a page about active content (JavaScript, widgets and similar) rather than photographs, so nothing here is sourced to a formal policy document and we have not claimed otherwise. The Google Merchant Center minimum referenced above is the one we verified at source on 28 August 2026. Search figures mentioned are from our own Google Search Console property.