We all know the importance of pictures for online store because people like to take a closer look at a particular item before they buy it. However, there are some details you must know before dealing with images. Today we are going to learn all about shopify images.
Standard image sizes for Shopify products
Image scaling is a useful feature that allows your potential customers to see the products they are interested in more closely. Therefore, the images you use should be in high definition. Shopify allows uploading images up to 4472 x 4472 pixels and within 20 MB. Also, the recommended product photo size is 2048 x 2048 pixels.
This size will ensure that your site gets fast scaling results. In contrast, Amazon only uses images of 1000 x 1000 pixels for scaling, so you can definitely do without oversized images that slow down your site.
Shopify Store Image Formats
Shopify supports a variety of image formats such as JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF and BMP, each of which is briefly described here.
- JPG is probably the most widely used digital image file format. Almost all devices and software support this format, which makes it a fairly universal format. Shopify developers recommend using JPG because this format ensures that the images on your website can be viewed on all devices.
- PNG was originally created to improve the GIF format by removing its 256 color limitation. For example, perhaps the biggest advantage of this format is that high-definition images take up less memory than JPG. In addition, the format supports transparency, which means you can use this format to create images with transparent backgrounds. However, PNG is not as compatible as JPG because some devices and software do not support it.
- GIF images have only 256 colors; that’s why they have been almost completely replaced by PNG. However, it is the only image format that allows animation, and it is recognized by all major browsers.
- TIFF is a compressed image format, supported mainly by web applications and editing software. A major advantage of this format is the ability to save a series of images or pages as a single file. However, these files are usually very large and take a while to open.
- BMP is a format mainly used in the Windows ecosystem. This format is very compatible. However, uncompressed images are usually very memory intensive.
Therefore, for all of the above, JPG seems to be the most convenient choice for images in your online store. However, if you need transparent backgrounds or some animations, go ahead and try other formats.
How to make images suitable for mobile devices
Usually, Shopify automatically resizes images to fit mobile devices and to fit smaller screens. However, sometimes you may need to do this manually. In fact, mobile and desktop screens are not only different in size, but also in orientation. In other words, image position automation only applies to square images where the product is located right in the center of the image.
In addition, high-resolution (e.g. 4000 x 4000 pixels) images may be blurred on the mobile screen after automatic resizing.
Therefore, if you want your online store to work perfectly on mobile devices, it is better to use smaller size and square images. This way, your products will be displayed more perfectly on both large and small screens, and your site will load faster. In addition, using smaller images is very important for the mobile version of your store, because mobile Internet usually takes longer to download data than computer side, which means that large images simply close the window impatiently before they are downloaded to the phone.
All in all, you don’t have to worry about how your images will look on various devices, because Shopify will resize them ahead of time. However, try using lightweight square images to be 100% sure your online store looks great on all devices, because no one is perfect and even Shopify makes mistakes.
And finally…
Shopify themes are very easy to use, but they can really make your online store very beautiful and powerful. Of course, to create a decent online store, you have to figure out how to use Shopify, especially with images. Luckily, it’s not that hard and almost anyone can solve it quickly. So, take the first brave step.
