Can I use the manufacturer’s photos on eBay?

It is one of the most-typed questions in online selling, and the honest answer is sometimes — and less often than most sellers assume.

It is also two questions wearing one coat. Is it allowed, and is it a good idea. Those have different answers, so let us take them separately.

What eBay’s policy actually says

People argue about this in forums for hours. The policy is short and free to read, so here is what is actually in it.

Stock photos are banned outright for anything not pristine. The picture policy lists, among the things not allowed, “stock photos for used, damaged, or defective items”. There is no wiggle room in that sentence. If the thing has been owned, opened or knocked about, the buyer sees that one.

Photos have to represent the actual item. Also on the not-allowed list: “photos that don’t accurately represent the item”. This is the rule the others hang off.

You cannot brand your own pictures. Not allowed: photos with added borders; photos with added text, artwork or marketing material; and “watermarks of any type, including those used for ownership attributions”. That last clause surprises people every time. Stamping your shop name across your own photograph to stop other sellers pinching it is precisely the thing being prohibited.

The size requirement is almost nothing. At least one photo at 500 pixels on the longest side. Any phone made this decade clears that many times over. The quality bar in the policy is honesty, not megapixels.

And the copyright half, briefly

A photograph is a copyright work from the moment it is taken — automatically, with nothing to register and no fee, as the government’s own guidance puts it. Copyright “stops others from using it without your permission”, which includes putting it on the internet.

So the question is never “is this image on the internet already”. It is where does my permission come from. Usually one of:

A reseller or dealer pack. Many manufacturers actively want you using their photography and say so in writing. If you are an authorised stockist, go and find that clause — you may have had permission all along.

eBay’s own catalogue. Where a listing matches a catalogue product, eBay supplies the images. That is the tidy route for sealed, standard goods and it exists precisely for this.

Nowhere at all, which is the case when you right-click a picture out of another seller’s listing. That is somebody else’s work, taken by them, and it is the version of this that gets listings pulled. I am not a solicitor and this is not legal advice, but that one is not a close call.

Even when you’re allowed, it’s usually costing you

Here is the part the rules do not cover.

A manufacturer’s photo is a picture of the product. Your buyer is deciding between you and forty other people selling the same product, all showing the same picture. You have removed every reason to pick you except price, and there is always someone happy to be cheaper.

Worse, on anything second-hand, the stock photo actively invites the expensive outcome. The buyer compares what arrives to the flawless studio shot, and any difference — a scuff you did not mention, a missing cable, a slightly yellowed panel — becomes “not as described”. You pay the postage both ways for a picture you did not take.

The counter-intuitive bit, and I have watched this hold up again and again: showing the wear sells better than hiding it. A close-up of the scratch, mentioned plainly, tells the buyer you are not going to surprise them. That is what they are actually shopping for.

What to do instead, in twenty minutes

Stand next to a window, not under the ceiling light. Daylight from the side, item on a plain surface, phone in both hands. That is the whole of the lighting advice.

Take six to eight, not one. The whole thing, front and back, the label or serial number, every accessory laid out, and one deliberate close-up of the worst bit.

Photograph the flaw on purpose. It costs you a little on price and saves you the return, and returns are far more expensive than the discount.

Keep the frame clean. No borders, no text, no watermark — the policy above, but also just better-looking. If you sell in any volume and the fiddly bit is making dozens of phone photos look consistent, that is exactly what our background-removal and tidying pipeline is for: same crop, same clean background, the item unchanged. We wrote the fuller how-to in product photos without a studio.

What argues the other way

For a genuinely new, sealed, catalogue-matched item, the manufacturer’s image is usually better than anything you will produce on a kitchen table, and eBay’s catalogue is there to hand it to you. Spending an afternoon photographing a sealed box to prove a point is not good business.

There is also a failure in the opposite direction that is worse than any stock photo: a heavily edited picture of a used item, colour pushed and blemishes smoothed, that quietly stops matching the object in the box. A stock photo is at least honestly generic. A doctored one is a misrepresentation you made yourself — and the same principle applies to anything AI has been near. Tidy the background, never the item.

One thing that stops people taking their own: a suspicion the phone isn’t good enough. It is, by a wide margin — we put the published minimums next to what a phone actually produces in your phone is already good enough.

The short version

New and sealed with permission in writing: fine, and often sensible. Used, opened or marked: not allowed, and a poor idea besides. Your own photographs, flaws included and no watermark on them, will outsell a borrowed studio shot on everything except a race to the bottom.

Sources, read directly: eBay’s picture policy (ebay.co.uk help) for the 500-pixel minimum and the quoted prohibitions on stock photos for used, damaged or defective items, added borders, added text, artwork or marketing material, watermarks of any type including ownership attributions, and photos that don’t accurately represent the item. The copyright position is from the UK government’s copyright guidance: protection is automatic with nothing to register, covers photography, and stops others using the work without permission. Policies change — check the current version before you rely on it, and this is general information rather than legal advice.