The Poshmark Listing Photography Guide

 

Your listing photos on Poshmark are arguably the most important deciding factor for potential shoppers who click on your listing to hit that ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Offer’ button. In this guide, we’ll cover how to photograph your listings with focus on the basics such as style, composition, lighting, equipment and editing. In addition, we’ll walk through what photos to include in your listing to make sure you’re stepping in the right direction (towards a sale!).

Types of Photos in a Poshmark Listing

A Covershot is the first photo in a listing and serves as the first impression of the item you’re selling. Like any first impression, you want to have your item stand out to potential shoppers and entice them to click and buy. Posh Tip: Keep your Covershot product focused by using a white or simple background. Whether you choose to style your item via a flat-lay, mannequin, hanging, or modeling method, stay consistent as you start to create new listings—this will give your closet that branded feel when shoppers browse it.

Detail photos are what we call all of the other photos in your listing (you can add up to 16 photos and 1 video!) that come after the Covershot. Detail photos are a great way to show shoppers your item from all angles, helping them have a better understanding of what they’re buying. Take a photo and represent your item from all sorts of different angles—the back, the front, laid full out. You should also include photos of any possible rips, stains, or signs of wear, the tag so the buyer can reference the sizing, your item next to something else for scale, a close up of the texture or cool details, etc. Posh Tip: Bring your listing to life by adding a Listing Video to help your listing stand out.

Think About Composition & Lighting 

Composition
Whether you’re an experienced photographer or just beginning, one Posh Tip is to learn how to effectively compose your shot. One simple way to get started is to get a plain background to shoot your items on. We recommend you use a plain white sheet or you can pick up some white posterboard or even a roll out backdrop. Your product should be the main focus on the photo, but you can help it pop by incorporating your own personal style. Doing so can help set you apart and make your personal brand come to life. All you need is any additional props or backdrops that fit your personal brand’s aesthetic.

Listing photography is the perfect medium to incorporate your own personal style. Doing so can help set you apart and make your personal brand come to life. All you need is any additional props or backdrops that fit your personal brand’s aesthetic. Here are a few amazing closets that are already doing this!

Lighting
Lighting is essential to listing photography, and it’s the first thing a shopper will notice when looking at your photo. When you photograph your items with proper lighting, it allows buyers to see clear details of your listings. Take advantage of the natural light in your home! Open up all the curtains or blinds, set up near a window and let that natural light shine through. Lacking the natural light? Try out a ring light to get that light just right.

Did you know? Most household light bulbs cast a warm yellow light, which may result in an off-color image, especially when photographing denim. If you aren’t looking to spend any money on your photo setup, take your photo by natural light or window light using your phone—most phones will adjust for exposure before taking the photo.

Equipment

The beauty about listing on Poshmark is that the only equipment you truly need is a smartphone, but you can definitely level up your shots with the following equipment: 

• A smartphone or camera: both are great to capture your listing photos.
• A backdrop: great for making your photos look very clean.
• Artificial lighting: does the trick in case you’re in a space with low natural light. These come in many forms such as ring lights and box lights.
• A tripod: super helpful if you’re shooting multiple listings in one session.

Editing 

Editing in-app is easy—play with one of our out-of-the-box photo filters or fine tune your adjustments. When editing, consider these tips:

Brightness 
When editing your photos the first thing you want to edit is the brightness. There are various ways to edit the lighting but the simplest way is experiment by increasing or decreasing the brightness until desired. Posh Tip: don’t overdo it on lighting or your photos will appear grainy or overexposed.

Crop
The crop tool is the easiest tool that can make a real difference. If you’re shooting your own photos on your phone or camera it’s important to note that you will need to edit and crop your photos to square size upon uploading them to Poshmark. Therefore, when shooting on your phone, shoot in square (1:1) mode. This emulates how Poshmark listing photos appear in search and in closets. If you shoot the photo as a square, you can fill the screen without running into any cropping issues later. Posh Tip: If you’re uploading images that aren’t square, you can now pinch to zoom out so your whole item is in the frame!