Shopify Image Sizes — Product, Collection, Banner & Favicon

Shopify Image Size Limits

Shopify enforces two different ceilings depending on where the image goes, and the difference catches people out. Product and collection images are allowed 25 megapixels. Everything you upload through the theme editor or the Files section — banners, logo, favicon, blog images — caps at 20 megapixels. Both share the same 20MB file limit.

• Product & collection images: any size up to 5000 x 5000 pixels, or 25 megapixels, and under 20MB.
• Theme images: 20 megapixels and 20MB. A 5000 x 5000 product photo is exactly 25 megapixels — accepted as a product image, rejected as a theme banner.
• Megapixels, not pixels, is the real cap: multiply width by height and divide by a million. A 6000 x 3000 panorama is 18 megapixels, comfortably inside the theme limit despite being 6000 pixels wide.
• 20MB is generous: a quality-85 JPEG at 2048 x 2048 typically lands between 0.5MB and 1.5MB. If you are anywhere near 20MB, something is wrong with your export settings.
• The logo has a third limit: the theme editor caps the displayed logo width at 300 pixels. Upload at 2x that width so it stays sharp on high-DPI screens, then set the width slider to whatever your header needs.
• Favicons are downscaled for you: Shopify recommends 32 x 32 and scales larger uploads down to it. Design at 32 x 32 rather than shrinking a detailed logo into a blur.

How to Resize for Shopify Without Quality Loss

Quality loss on Shopify almost never comes from the resize itself. It comes from upscaling, from re-saving the same JPEG four times, or from pre-compressing a file that Shopify is about to compress again.

• Downscale, never upscale: going from 4000px to 2048px throws away pixels you had. Going from 800px to 2048px invents pixels you never had, and the theme will happily display the result at full size. Shoot large, resize down.
• Resize once, export once: every JPEG save re-quantizes the image and compounds the artifacts from the last one. Keep a lossless master (PSD, TIFF, PNG) and export a fresh JPEG whenever you need a new size.
• Don’t pre-crush the file: Shopify already compresses JPGs with its own algorithm on the way to the CDN. Exporting at quality 40 to “save bandwidth” means the shopper gets your artifacts compressed a second time. Quality 80–85 is the sweet spot.
• Pad to square, don’t crop to square: a 2048 x 1365 photo squeezed into a square crop loses the edges of the product. Add white canvas instead — the resizer above does this for you.
• Use one aspect ratio catalog-wide: Shopify recommends consistent ratios across featured images. Mixed ratios make product grids jump as cards resize around them.
• Export in sRGB: it is what browsers assume. An Adobe RGB or CMYK export renders desaturated on the storefront even though it looked right in your editor.
• 2048 x 2048 is a target, not a minimum: if your source is 1600 x 1600, upload 1600 x 1600. It will look better than the same file upscaled to 2048.

Best File Format for Shopify (WebP vs. JPG)

Upload JPG for photographs and PNG for graphics that need transparency. That is Shopify’s own recommendation, and converting your catalog to WebP first changes nothing — because Shopify’s CDN is already doing it on every request.

• JPG for photos: Shopify’s guidance, and it compresses JPGs automatically once uploaded. Product photography has no transparency to preserve, so there is nothing to gain from PNG.
• PNG for transparency and flat graphics: logos, icons, badges, size charts. A PNG logo composites cleanly against any header background colour you later switch to.
• Uploading WebP is allowed but pointless: Shopify accepts .webp, including animated WebP for product media. It just doesn’t make the delivered file any smaller, since the CDN would have converted your JPEG anyway.
• One real reason to upload WebP: lossless WebP with transparency is smaller than the equivalent PNG. If you have a heavy transparent graphic, it is worth trying.
• Product media accepts more than themes do: PNG, JPEG, PSD, TIFF, BMP, GIF, SVG, HEIC, and WebP are all valid product images. Theme and Files uploads are limited to JPEG, progressive JPEG, PNG, GIF, HEIC, and WebP.
• HEIC uploads straight from an iPhone: no conversion step needed. Shopify handles it, and the CDN serves a web format to the shopper.

Running the same catalog on a marketplace? Neither Shopify rule transfers. Amazon demands a pure white background and turns zoom on at 1000px, while Etsy measures its 2000px recommendation on the shortest side and displays at 4:3. Or resize an image to Shopify’s dimensions right now. Running your storefront’s blog on WordPress? Its featured image size is set by your theme, not by the platform.

Frequently Asked Questions